Want to Get Involved? Talk to Your County Government.

Next time you hear someone complain they can’t buy alcohol on Sundays or smoke at a restaurant, tell them to take it up with their county government.
“You can’t go anywhere without being in a county,” said David Lynn, member of the Athens Clarke County Commission and member of the Carl Vinson Institute of Government. Of the over 3000 counties that make up the United States, Georgia holds the most with 159.
“Local government is really the only government that’s going to affect your day to day life,” Lynn said in a talk with University students. “In the old days they were only concerned with roads and taxation.” According to Lynn, modern county governments are involved in planning, development, parks, police, and several other areas.
“There’s no standard operating procedure for forms of county government,” Lynn said. “If you have 159 counties, there’s about 159 ways to organize a county government.”
Athens Clarke County became a consolidated government in 1991, uniting the governments of the city of Athens and Clarke County. Before incorporation, the area had several redundancies such as multiple police and parks departments.
“It’s worked well in Clarke County,” Lynn said, pointing out that what works for one county won’t necessarily work for the next.
“In Augusta, it’s been pretty much a disaster,” he said. “It doesn’t really reflect what the people of Augusta need.”
“The advantage of a consolidated government is you can act as a city when you want to and a county when you want to,” Lynn said. According to Lynn, this form of government allows the county to provide several services it otherwise would be unable to provide.
Community Connection, a non-profit, multi program human service agency, is an example of these services. The agency connects people in need with organizations willing to help, and people looking to volunteer to organizations looking for them.
According to Lynn, its benefits like this that people should look for out of their local government.