A Marietta attorney filed suit against the Board of Commissioners on Monday, asking that commission elections be postponed until a redistricting map that incorporates the latest census data is adopted.

Jonathan D. Crumly Sr. of Marietta, an attorney with Maner Crumly Chambliss of Vinings, filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. He says Judge Steve Jones has not yet set a hearing date.

Crumly said he filed suit because Cobb’s 19-member legislative delegation failed to reach consensus on a map that outlines the boundaries of the county commission districts before it ended the 2012 legislative session on March 29.

“The ultimate goal is to obtain constitutionally permissible district maps,” Crumly said. “Right now, since none of these maps got passed by the House and the Senate, there’s no new map, so we’re living with the old lines, which if you look at the complaint and statistical data, they’re grossly disproportional, and they’re unconstitutional … It violates ‘one man, one vote.’

“In fact, my district, District 1, is overpopulated, so my vote is diluted, meaning my vote counts less than, for example, the vote in District 3, which is underpopulated.”

Because southeast Cobb Commissioner Bob Ott and southwest Cobb Commissioner Woody Thompson, along with Chairman Tim Lee, are up for re-election on July 31, Crumly said his goal is to have a decision on a new map before the May 25 qualifying deadline for those races.

Otherwise, a special election would be required, which could cost $500,000. And even though state lawmakers botched the map adoption process, it would be the county commission who has to foot the bill for a special election, as well as any attorney fees awarded in this lawsuit, he said.

Lee said he hasn’t had a chance to review the lawsuit with the county attorney yet, but agreed that a special election should be avoided.

“A resolution that allows the vote to go forward on July 31 would be preferred,” Lee said.

Crumly includes the history of the botched map process in his complaint, attaching three maps that were worked on by the General Assembly this year. The first map is one that the House approved, but that the Senate rejected, which carved a portion of Mableton out of Thompson’s district and put it in Ott’s. The Senate drew the second map, which draws more of Mableton back into the district represented by Thompson. Then there is the third map, drawn by Woody Thompson’s brother, Sen. Steve Thompson (D-Marietta). While Crumly says the first two maps are constitutional, he says the Thompson map, introduced on the last day of the legislative session, is not.

“The Thompson map fails to meet constitutional standards, not based on the population distribution, but based on other gerrymandering analysis,” Crumly said. “It fails to preserve communities of interest … it doesn’t just adjust the Mableton-Smyrna border between District 2 and District 4, it also has an unusual finger that sticks up in the northeast corner of 4 and southwest side of 2, gobbling up part of the Fair Oaks voting precinct and some Smyrna areas.”

At a town hall meeting Thursday night, northwest Cobb Commissioner Helen Goreham said she hoped the lawsuit would help quickly resolve the issue. While she said she’d never met Crumly, one of her constituents in District 1, she did agree that her district is overpopulated.

Goreham said she would like the map to be in line with the one recommended 3-2 on Feb. 28 by the Board of Commissioners, with her, northeast Cobb Commissioner JoAnn Birrell and southwest Cobb Commissioner Woody Thompson, voting in favor. That map is not one of the three included in the lawsuit.

“You have to be a genie with a crystal ball to predict what (the map) might be,” Goreham said. “You can hope that it will be a fair and equitable map and it will serve the citizens the best.”

Some critics upset by the map failure have laid the blame at the feet of Sen. Thompson and Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers (R-Woodstock). They argue that Rogers needed a few Democrats to vote in favor of his charter school constitutional amendment, a proposal most Democrats oppose. And Sen. Thompson broke ranks with his party and voted for the charter school amendment. Critics allege that Rogers promised Thompson that were he to vote for the charter amendment, Rogers would see to it that the county commission district represented by Thompson’s brother wasn’t carved up. But as a result of sitting on the map until the last day of the session, no map was approved.

Rogers has denied these accusations, and left the last day of the session thinking a map had been approved. Rogers later mistakenly told the Journal that a map for the county commission had been adopted and was on the Governor’s desk for final approval.

Crumly says Judge Jones can either approve one of the three existing maps or bring in a map expert to draw new lines. Crumly believes the judge has the time to make this happen before qualifying, but that hinges on whether the county commission or anyone else decides to object and string out the legal process, he said.

A native of DeKalb County, Crumly, 42, earned a law degree from the University of Georgia in 1994, moved to Marietta in 2002 and has seven children. The family attends Church of the Apostles in Buckhead.

Crumly said he’s a member of neither the Republican nor Democratic Party.

“I’m definitely independent,” he said. “I would say I’m more on the conservative side of the spectrum than the liberal side, but I wish the legislative process would work and we’d have constitutional maps.”

Crumly said he would have preferred to have a client to represent in the case instead of doing it alone.

“Honestly, when it got brought to my attention, I just felt like I didn’t have time to go beat the bushes for somebody willing to go through the scrutiny of being a plaintiff, and it’s important enough to Cobb County to get it done and get it done right,” he said. “That’s the major motivation I’ve got. Everybody’s tight now. And it would be hard in my mind for any legislator to explain to Cobb County citizens why they couldn’t play by the rules and get this done when they’re going to cost us $400,000 to $500,000 for a special election.”

State Rep. David Wilkerson (D-Austell) has previously suggested that because the Cobb Legislative Delegation caused the map failure, they should pay the litigation costs, not the county.

Crumly laughed when he heard that comment.

“Rep. Wilkerson, I like him,” Crumly said. “I would say that’s a commonsense perspective to this problem.”

(Reprinted from the MDJ, April 20, 2012. Written by Jon Gillooly.)