Macon and Bibb County consolidation efforts probably won’t lead to any formal legislation during the coming session of the Georgia General Assembly, with legislators instead taking a wait-and-see approach as the heads of local government try to combine city and county services.
Bibb County Commissioner Joe Allen on Tuesday pushed Bibb legislators to strike out on their own on this issue. He said they should draft a new form of consolidated government and get it ready for the voter referendum required to implement it.
But that’s been tried before and it failed, longtime state Rep. David Lucas said. And with the Bibb County Commission and the city of Macon working to combine services — such as animal control and the engineering departments — without tangible success, now is not the time to push full-blown consolidation, Lucas said.
“Y’all can’t get together on animal control,” said Lucas, D-Macon. “You can’t get together on engineering.”
State Sen. Robert Brown agreed, saying a push for full consolidation now would go down in defeat at the polls.
There was some positive sentiment, though, about the eventual possibility of consolidation. Both the city and county governments have signed off on a plan to work over the next several years — and maybe as many as 10 years — to combine various services until there’s little left to do but merge the elected governments into a unified Macon and Bibb County.
— Travis Fain
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