The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Inside City Hall
Atlanta leaders diligently keep tabs on Gold Dome
Georgia state lawmakers celebrated Crossover Day last week — a milestone that marks the halfway point of the legislative session. It is the busiest day for legislators, as bills are required to pass at least one chamber (House or Senate) to live on for the rest of the session. However, political junkies know that if a bill doesn’t make it through a vote, it can still reemerge later on.
Atlanta City Council received an update last week on how important bills to the city are faring at the Capitol.
Top of mind for Atlanta lawmakers are topics like Medicaid expansion, a crackdown on immigration policies and legislation that impacts LGBTQ rights. All represent deep wedge issues on which Atlanta Democrats and state Republicans don’t see eye-to-eye.
GOP lawmakers seemed poised to support Medicaid expansion this year — a policy decision that the party has been adamantly against. The move would have eased pressure on Atlanta’s health care system, which suffers from high uninsured rates and lack of access after the Atlanta Medical Center closed.
Atlanta leaders have also been quick to support LGBTQ populations as state lawmakers have backed legislation that restricts transgender rights in recent years. City Council poured funds toward LGBTQ programs last year, especially toward transgender youth.
Mayor Andre Dickens was the first mayor to establish a city Division of LGBTQ Affairs. We’ll be keeping watch to see what steps City Council or Dickens’ administration takes to offset the impact of any bills passed by the Republican-led Legislature that the city’s policymakers don’t agree with.
■
Dickens’ administration has been working night and day to reach his goal of building or preserving 20,000 units of affordable housing by 2030. Seemingly every week, the mayor and council members in their respective districts celebrate the opening of a new housing project — most recently a 56-unit apartment building called Stanton Park Apartments in the Peoplestown neighborhood.
But after standing up financially friendly living options around the city, officials face the next step of finding residents who can qualify and move into them. In Dickens’ recent newsletter, which heavily promoted the city’s efforts in affordable housing, the city advertised that there are still townhomes up for grabs near Westside Park.
Recently appointed Atlanta Housing President and CEO Terri Lee gave an update to City Council last week on the administration’s affordable housing efforts. The housing agency has its own goal of creating or preserving 10,000 housing units in the next five years that, Lee said, is more than a third done.
“We’ve created opportunities for families to create generational wealth in down-payment assistance,” she said. “We’ve created an opportunity for children to not have to worry about where they’re going to sleep at night or worry about whether they’re going to eat ... versus being worried about stable housing.”
City officials have also turned their focus on utilizing public land already owned by Atlanta to speed up construction processes.
■
City Council member Alex Wan said it best in a recent newsletter to constituents frustrated over the Cheshire Bridge closure: “Pray for warm, dry weather over the next several weeks.”
Crews are still working to reopen the bridge fully after a December fire closed the roadway for a second time in three years.
Wan said last week that the contract to repair the bridge is fully underway and that Dickens’ administration has promised to revisit the idea of reopening one to two lanes for through traffic instead of waiting until the entire project is complete.