You may have read in The Citizen

last week that Fayette County is partly represented by 10 state legislators.

That's right in a county of more than 97,000, we share 10 legislators

with other counties: seven representatives and three senators.

How many are Republican? Half

five. In one of the most solidly Republican counties in Georgia, five

of our 10 legislators are from the other party.

How many live in Fayette? One

Virgil Fludd, and he's a Democrat.

Thank you, former Gov. Roy

Barnes.

We editorialized at the time

of the Democrats' dismembering of the state's political boundaries two

years ago that voters would remember how Barnes had raped the state's

communities of interest. They remembered that and other Democrat arrogance

and put in a GOP governor for the first time since just after the Civil

War.

Now, the new governor is moving

to redress our many redistricting grievances. "Gov. Perdue has vowed

to redraw the lines so that communities are represented by one or two

elected officials who live among their constituents," according to

a news release from Sen. Dan Lee (R-LaGrange). Lee switched parties after

the November election to help give the GOP control of the Georgia Senate.

"We have counties now

that have 16 representatives and eight or nine senators that is ridiculous,"

Lee said. "The people of Georgia need to know who their elected officials

are so that they are able to contact them with questions, concerns and

other issues."

Lee has been appointed chairman

of the Senate Reapportionment and Redistricting Committee. "He vowed,

following the special legislative session in the fall of 2001, to change

the maps to something more 'reasonable.' As chair of the committee, he

will have the power," the news release said.

"I pledge ... that these

maps will be drawn in a fair and honest manner," Lee said. "It

is important to our citizens that their representatives in Congress and

the Georgia General Assembly be like-minded and vote accordingly. Neighborhoods,

communities and counties don't need to be chopped up and split between

a multitude of representatives. I do not believe that is what our forefathers

envisioned when they devised this system of representation."

Amen.

There are people representing

this county in the state legislature that not even we at this newspaper

have been able to contact. Some of them maybe even most of them never

set foot inside Fayette County during the course of a normal week. Why

should some elected officials in Democrat Clayton County care what happens

to a few Republicans in Fayette County? After all, they represent only

a northern slice of Fayette and their power base is securely elsewhere.

I have no problem with Democrats

representing majority Democrat districts and Republicans representing

majority GOP districts, so long as those "districts" have some

reasonable relationship to historic county boundaries or other political

subdivisions.

For example, not to pick on

GOP Sen. Mike Crotts, but what does a guy living in Conyers know about

Fayetteville's traffic problems? How well can he really represent our

local, Fayette, interests?

Let's give the legislators