Fulton County's governing board has voted to hand next year's budget-writing job to a brand-new four-person commission, and the timing has already drawn fire from a leading candidate for the county's next chair. The Board of Commissioners passed the measure with four votes in favor and one abstention, reviving a committee-based budgeting model the county hasn't used in years. The panel, made up of only two sitting commissioners plus the county manager and chief financial officer, gets first crack at shaping Fulton's roughly $1 billion annual spending plan starting next month - before an incoming chairperson and as many as three or four new commissioners are even sworn in.
According to AJC.com, Commissioners Bob Ellis and Khadijah Abdur-Rahman sponsored the legislation creating the commission, pairing the two of them with the county manager and CFO. The four-member group is set to begin drafting Fulton's 2027 spending plan in September, the outlet reports, reclaiming a duty that had belonged solely to the county manager since 2018.
Who Gets Excluded From the New Panel
Two term-limited commissioners, Dana Barrett and Marvin S. Arrington Jr., are ineligible to sit on the new panel because their terms end this year, the AJC notes. That leaves the incoming chairperson and however many new commissioners are elected this fall - potentially three or four of them - shut out of the drafting process for the county's next budget, since the panel's initial work wraps up before anyone new takes office in January.
Mo Ivory, a Democratic candidate running to succeed outgoing Chairman Robb Pitts, called the move a political maneuver, arguing that current commissioners are using the legislation to strip budget authority from an incoming board before voters even decide who sits on it, according to the same AJC report.
The Rules Behind the Reversal
The structure isn't unprecedented. Fulton County relied on a dedicated budget commission to write its spending plans from 1953 until 2016, when the Georgia General Assembly repealed the state statute authorizing the body, per the AJC's reporting. That repeal pushed the county toward its own local budget ordinance, and in 2018 commissioners handed sole drafting authority to the county manager - the arrangement now being partially rolled back.
The two sitting commissioners on the new panel are also part of a broader governing coalition. Abdur-Rahman was elected vice chair in January through a four-member bipartisan voting bloc that included Chairman Pitts and Republican Commissioners Ellis and Bridget Thorne, according to Rough Draft Atlanta.
That coalition sits atop a seven-member board made up of six district commissioners and one at-large chairman, according to Fulton County Government, each elected to staggered four-year terms that determine exactly who holds office when budget decisions get made.
Financial Pressures Piling Up
Whoever drafts it, the 2027 budget inherits some heavy baggage. Commissioners approved a $1.041 billion general fund operating budget for fiscal year 2026 in a 4-3 vote back in January, keeping the property tax rate flat at 8.87 mills rather than raising it to cover rising costs, Rough Draft Atlanta reported in its coverage of the vote.
Much of that pressure traces back to the Fulton County Jail. The 2026 budget added $19.5 million toward a federal court consent decree ordering improvements to jail staffing and conditions, pushing total compliance spending to roughly $53 million, the AJC has reported.
Tax Bills and Legal Fights Still Loom
Fulton's finances have also been complicated by a separate scramble over property tax bills. Commissioners voted in mid-July to petition Fulton County Superior Court for emergency permission to issue temporary 2026 tax bills after a backlog of unprocessed land packages delayed certification of the tax digest, as Hoodline detailed in its court petition coverage.
The board has also weathered recent legal turbulence over its own authority. In March, the Georgia Court of Appeals overturned a Fulton County Superior Court contempt order and $10,000-per-day fine that had been levied against the commission in a dispute over seating Republican nominees to the local elections board, per Hoodline's report on that ruling.
What Happens Next
The new budget commission is set to start its work in September, giving current commissioners - not their successors - the first say over how Fulton spends its money in 2027. For Ivory and other candidates hoping to lead the county starting next year, that timeline is precisely the problem they're raising.
