The current structure of Hamilton County government was formed on the principles of diversity, equity and inclusion, the county’s outgoing attorney, Rheubin Taylor, told commissioners during his last meeting with the panel of district representatives he helped form decades ago.
“Back in 1978,” Taylor said, referring to the state constitutional convention that changed county representation statewide, “we were trying to rectify a problem that existed, particularly in Hamilton County.”
He said three segments of the community weren’t represented in county government Blacks, women and Republicans.
The late former Hamilton County Mayor Claude Ramsey, a strawberry farmer who became a state Republican leader, and the late Rev. Paul McDaniel, a pioneering Black commissioner and pastor, spearheaded the state constitutional convention that got rid of at-large elections statewide, making district representation the law, he said.