Sam Olens, Chairman, Cobb County Board of Commissioners, and Madison Forum Member spoke to members and guests at the regular luncheon meeting Monday, July 9, 2007. His topic was Illegal Immigration.
Mr. Olens said the reason he wanted to talk about illegal immigration was two-fold, first to Congress’s ineptitude, and two the fact that the county is coming forward with more code amendments. The first meeting is tomorrow, and the second meeting is the Board of Commissioners night meeting in this month.
First of all, Mr. Olens said, with regard to SB529, Chip Rogers’ bill, which kicked in July 1. This date had no meaning, because the county was already fully complying, which seemed to him sort of common sense legislation. He said back in November 2006, the county enrolled under the basic Pilot Program which is the one that verifies if your employees are legal. It took about a whole hour to do that. It was not a big issue. The County Commission also started to work with the legal Department that their contractors would be complying with SB529 to work on affidavits. So actually in January of this year contractors needed to sign an affidavit that their workers were legal. He said it was really interesting, because GDOT and the Georgia Department of Labor were working on affidavits that other local governments were then supposed to start using come July, but Cobb didn’t change its affidavit because Deborah Dance in the County Attorney’s Office did such a good job with the affidavit that it fully complied with the one the State came up with. So the county is still using the same affidavit after July of 07.
Mr. Olens said the other issue that relates to parts of SB529 is the SAVE Program. And that relates to entitlement. The issue there is that the beneficiaries of County dollars not be illegal immigrants and that they be legal residents. The county worked with the Department of Homeland Security which is like any other Federal agency. It took literally months until the County Commission could get the agreement. It was signed in June, probably about ten days before July 1. That was no delay on the county’s part. That was a delay on the part of the Department of Homeland Security. The long and short of it is that by January 2007 the county has not only had the affidavit for the employees as well as using the Pilot system, they are now waiting for the Federal Government to sign the document for the SAVE Program for entitlement.
Also, Mr. Olens said, the sheriff at this same time came forward wanting to do the 287(g) Program, which is a step in the right direction, but still not much. He said by that he meant that by doing the 287(g), and having the training that goes with the 287(g), it now means that when they finish their sentence illegal immigrants are then handed off to ICE. And then they go either to the holding cells in Gainesville or Dalton, or wherever else, before the Federal Government then actually removes them from this country. He said the reason he says it doesn’t do that much is you still have to wait until the end of their sentence. He said he is frankly not too thrilled that he gets to pay for illegal residents to be in our jails before they end the sentence. He thinks that is a waste of taxpayer dollars, but that’s the Federal rules. He said one can have a judge end the sentence and have ICE there but you’ve got to really make sure you do it well, or else they will be on the streets before ICE picks them up. But he endorses the 287(g) application. The Sheriff came forward with it. Per Federal Law the county had to sign off on it, so the Agenda Item was in the County Commission to endorse it. The cost, one again, to do that was minimal, about $2,000 for the county to be a part of the program.
Additionally, in January the County Commission amended the ordinance. Up until January of 2007 you could have up to six unrelated people in a house. Mr. Olens said he was not talking about group homes. The ordinance was amended to go from six to four unrelated individuals in a residence. He said the problem was not going from six to four. The problem was they did not tighten the word unrelated. What would happen was when folks would go they would all say they were first cousins, and if we wanted to follow the U.S. Constitution, which Mr. Olens says he chooses to do, under the 4th Amendment, the 5th Amendment, the county had the burden of proof to show they weren’t related, which meant the cases didn’t go too far in Magistrate Court. Mr. Olens said he was not criticizing the Magistrate Judges. They have to follow the U.S. Constitution. And the way it was written, it frankly did not give the proper wording to assist us with the judges. A lot of the people wouldn’t know enough to play the law game and would move, but some of the time they knew enough to play the law game and would fight and would say they were first cousins, and the county couldn’t show to the Magistrate Judges that they weren’t first cousins, so the cases would get dismissed.
Mr. Olens said they have additionally hired more persons and started a Quality of Life Unit. At first code enforcement was not really too anxious for the county to start the Quality of Life Unit, because they thought that it was making some sort of adverse comment on their ability to do their job. Mr. Olens said he doesn’t think the county has a more difficult job than Code Enforcement Officer. They don’t carry guns, they are not sworn officers, and they go up to folks to uphold ordinances. Often the folks they talk to work with them, and often they don’t. But, when you have a police officer, coming along with a gun on the shoulder, people start thinking about listening to those code enforcement officers a lot better. So, having created the Quality of Life Unit, Dale Tatum and the code enforcement folks will now tell you they are thrilled we did it, but they weren’t too thrilled at the time we started it. Mr. Olens said the Quality of Life Unit is not county-wide. They have been specifically put in our areas of higher crime. From January through July 1st they had issued 597 citations. He said there are several officers in this group, but more are needed, and more code enforcement officers are needed. Of those 597 violations, nine were felony arrests, 14 were misdemeanor arrests. In the three areas roughly that the Quality of Life Unit worked there has been a 29% reduction from January through May in residential burglaries. What the Unit has seen, along with that, however, is an increase in street robberies which is mainly African-American on Hispanic crime, because the perception or the validity is that many Hispanics keep cash on them and don’t keep bank accounts, it’s becoming a sport now to go after Hispanic individuals to rob them on the street. The Unit has done numerous things in that regard – some catch the press, some don’t catch the press. He mentioned the check cashing place at Route 41 and Roswell Street where the Unit did a hide-out and a group of Hispanics went in, got cash, a group of African-Americans chased them, and our folks chased them and caught all of them. There are a lot of things the unit is doing, far more than in the past in that regard.
The unit is also doing a lot of safety check points in high crime areas. Pretty much none of this makes the press, unless the Marietta Police Chief calls the Marietta paper and asks for the press. The county is not doing that, because, once again, the feeling is that it’s better for it to be a little bit below the radar and doing check points in certain areas than advertising each one of them, because they feel they will frankly get more arrests by not advertising them. Mr. Olens said this is just a difference between the Cobb Police Department and Marietta. He said he was not saying one is right and one is wrong. Thankfully, the Cobb Police Department has a very good rapport with the new Marietta Police Chief. The county is working far better with the Marietta Police Chief than they have done in a long, long time, and all of these check points that you see in the Marietta paper, for instance, where the City of Marietta or the Police Chief calls the paper and they cover it, in all of it the Cobb Sheriffs and the Cobb Police Departments are working this together. They are all working as a team in those areas. They have been very successful in folks that have warrants for arrest. They have been very successful with driving license violations, as you would imagine, and very successful with DUIs through those check points.
As an aside, Mr. Olens said, what the county has also been doing is starting an Hispanic initiative in Cobb, because, while they had done a very good job in the late 80’s, early 90’s in increasing the minority percentage of employees in the county to make the county employee base look more like the overall population base in the county, they were never successful in increasing the number of Hispanic employees in the county. By definition, to be employed by the county you have to be a legal resident, and for practically every position you have to be a U.S. citizen. Additionally, if you were to look at county boards and authorities, they have done a very good job in having a greater percentage of African-Americans on these boards and authorities. But they have not been successful on the boards and authorities for Hispanic individuals. But the county needs to encourage Hispanics to be on boards and authorities and to be employees of the county just as they had done 20-25 years earlier with the African-American community. You do want your work force to be representative of your county. There are no quotas, there’s no numbers, but you do overtly want to get the top quality candidate you can get, and you want to encourage the application process from all the community. The county has already been doing that over the past year.
So, what else has the county been doing? Mr. Olens said changing the six unrelated to four unrelated has helped. He said when they did the SAVE, and the Pilot, and, along with the Sheriff, the 287(g), Cobb was the first Sheriff’s Department in the State to have 287(g). There were one or two other local jurisdictions that had SAVE. And there were one or two other jurisdictions that were working with regard to Pilot. There were no jurisdictions that had both SAVE and Pilot, So, Cobb is absolutely the first in the state in that regard.
So, what are the plans for the future? In the 2007 budget, Mr. Olens said, they added more police, and in the 2008 prospective budget there would be more police. The county is going to increase that police number even more, because they want additional police officers to be a part of the Quality of Life Unit. They also plan on, once again, increasing the number of code enforcement officers to work with that Quality of Life Unit. At times the paper called that a pilot program. It’s pilot in the sense that they didn’t have a Quality of Life Unit before. It’s not pilot in the sense that it’s temporary. Mr. Olens said he plans on that unit growing and continuing. There is no prospective date that that unit goes away. He said if you look at numerous jurisdictions, that Quality of Life Unit has a lot of potential gain for the county, and it will continue in force.
Mr. Olens said, as he mentioned at the very beginning of his talk, the county has code amendments - the first hearing on the 10th, the second, and hopefully the last hearing, on the 24th. First of all, the county is creating a day laborer ordinance. When this started a couple of years ago, there wasn’t a need for a day laborer ordinance in the county, because frankly, the locations were all in the city. Now we’re starting to see some locations in the county, so they are creating a day laborer ordinance.
Secondly, they worked with Mr. Olens’ comm. Law professor at Emory on the six to four issue, the unrelated issue, and what they came up with are some changes in that area. They have passed them by the Magistrate Judges and the Solicitors Office, the County Attorneys. They wanted it to be inclusive to give it the best shot that this would work. First of all the county is going from four to two unrelated individuals relating to single family. Second, they are changing the definition of unrelated. It’s now grandparents, parents, grandchildren, brother, sister, no such thing as a cousin, no such thing as an aunt or uncle. He said, some people are going to say – this is going too far. And there are folks that are legal and living in houses that the county is going to create an illegal circumstance for. The way the county is dealing with that is permitting the filing of a temporary land use permit, so if there is a household where someone complains and where a citation is issued, and where, for instance, an aunt or uncle is there, and the Board of Commissioners to make perfect sense, temporary land use permits can be issued so the family will be in compliance with the law. Mr. Olens said it was afforded to the board, as they make this change that they still were cognizant that there needed to be some discretion when the question comes before the board in a zoning meeting. What the ordinance says is, you get 390 square feet per adult occupant. So that means, for instance, if it’s a 1200 square foot home, you have up to three. That’s not family plus unrelated. That’s if you are dealing with the unrelated, you’re then at three. That’s 390 square feet per adult, and that’s one car. Once again, let’s say you are a couple with five children, and they’re all in college and have all these cars, because they’re your children, you’re fine. If you have an aunt and an uncle there, and you run out of the scenario, you can apply for a temporary land use permit. Mr. Olens said he thinks it unlikely that illegal folks will be coming before the Board of Commissioners requesting a land use permit. Now when code enforcement goes to a house that has seven or eight, or nine cars, the county has changed the burden. The burden is the County Assessors Office says how many square feet the house exists, that’s how many cars you are entitled to. The county then gets to go to the Magistrate Count and say the house is 1200 square feet, there are six cars. They have the burden to show that there are family members consistent with the code, so the citation fits. So what the county has done, working with Mr. Olens’ common law professor from college, is craft an ordinance based on square footage of the residence, to put the burden on them that they have an exception. Code enforcement loves this because they now actually have a code on their side. There’s no one in the state that does this. Cobb is the first jurisdiction who is doing this. Mr. Olens said he can’t rule out the possibility that someone would sue the county in Federal Court; but, working out the ordinance took time because he didn’t want to just make a change and immediately find out it wasn’t workable. The goal here was literally to acknowledge that there was a problem, to acknowledge the State of Georgia really didn’t have a code that helped the county, and to work on a revision to the code that would provide that assistance. He said he couldn’t have asked more assistance from the Magistrate Judges. They met with the lawyers that the county retained. They met with the code enforcement folks. They met with all concerned to try to give us the best shot at this. If the Board of Commissioners approve it, as he hopes they will, on the 24th, it will be in effect the 24th of this month, and then the county will go forward, and code enforcement will be jumping for joy with an ordinance that makes their lives easier.
Additionally the county has made proposed changed to the code regarding exteriors. In some neighborhoods there are houses that look as if a stiff wind would tear it apart. The code changes deal with windows, decks, doors, exterior stairways. They look at some other areas before the 24th to once again provide for a better scenario in that regard.
Mr. Olens said, we all know that until the Federal Government makes moves to securer the border, it’s easier said than done. The last comment he wanted to make was that he didn’t want to leave the room having us think that by making these changes to the code he thinks he has solved the immigrant problem. He is just trying to deal with the immigration problem. He said he doesn’t see any resolution anywhere in sight Federally in this regard, but the county, in listening to individuals from our community, is trying the best they can to work within the 4th and 5th Amendments, and 14th Amendment to do some code changes that will work. And, hopefully, they will be approved on the 24th and they will work. He said the police department is spending an awful lot of time on illegal immigration, most of which does not make the paper. Most of it is task forces with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, other federal agencies, and then when the arrest is made; it goes to the Federal Court. It’s not anything we see in Cobb County. They’re Federal violations. It is a significant amount of time. He said they are trying the best they can to make it easier on the judges by having these code changes and trying to work it the best they can.