State supreme court sides with Bibb in county line dispute

ATLANTA, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT) – The Georgia Supreme Court says a trial court made a mistake by preventing Secretary of State Brian Kemp from holding a hearing and considering new evidence before making a decision on the Bibb and Monroe county lines. 

The state supreme court ruled in favor of Kemp and Bibb County on Monday, reversing a Fulton County court decision on the age-old land boundary dispute. 

Chief Justice Hugh Thompson says while the trial court was authorized to direct the Secretary to make a determination as to the true boundary line, it was not authorized to direct the Secretary as to the manner in which the evidence was to be received or the process by which the Secretary was to make his decision.”

“Are we going to go into this rope-a-dope again where you never get to the end,” Monroe County Commission Chair Mike Bilderback asked.

He says he’s disappointed with Monday’s ruling.

“He {Kemp} really has everything in his discretion so he’s really not contained by anything we’d want to see. We wanted to see the record come to a close so that we could have closure,” Bilderback said.

Bibb County’s attorney, Virgil Adams, says Monroe County took the trial court’s ruling out of context.

“I found it amusing that the Supreme Court said in this decision today that that’s not what we meant. He’s got all the discretion and basically you took out of context what we were saying,” Adams said.

Both sides agree, legal fees have piled up — Bibb into the six figures, Monroe spending more than $2 million on this case over the years. They say the money should go somewhere else.

“What about educating our children? What about keeping our streets safe? What about keeping our streets clean? Whatever you want to name it,” Adams pointed out.

“We could’ve put a lot of road down with that. We could’ve laid a lot of water lines, a lot of infrastructure improvements. We could’ve spent money on several departments, but we had to spend it on this,” Bilderback said.

Now both county’s are going to wait and see, hoping a decision comes soon for this age-old border dispute.

“What is a line worth? it’s hard to put a price tag on that, but it’s going to be worth a lot to folks that are developing property along this border,” Bilderback said.

Monday’s ruling will now bring the case back to the trial court for “proceedings consistent with this opinion.”

This is the second time the case has gone before the state supreme court. 

Secretary of State Brian Kemp said this in a statement:

“I am pleased that the Supreme Court agreed with the process I proposed in April 2014 to resolve this long-running dispute. I look forward to working with the parties to move forward in a fair and timely manner to reach a final resolution for the people of Bibb and Monroe counties.”