At this year’s International Municipal Lawyers Association conference in Portland, Oregon, Chris was thrilled and humbled to accept the Marvin J. Glink Private Practice Public Entity Attorney award, following a glowing speech by IMLA’s executive Director and General Counsel Amanda Karas. This award is established to honor the memory of Marvin J. Glink by recognizing…
The Firm is proud to have been asked to represent Mayor Bianca Motley Broom in a politically motivated and unfounded ethics complaint filed by two members of the City Council. We submitted a substantive response to the allegations made by the complainants on June 23 challenging the timeliness, procedural effectiveness, and merits of the complaint….
Our firm was proud to present to the International Municipal Lawyers Association Mid-Year Seminar in Washington, DC in April. In tandem with Brookhaven Police Lieutenant Abrem Ayana, we presented on the policies, procedures, and operational guidelines governing the Brookhaven program. Our work on behalf of local governments has always been at the forefront of the…
March 7 is a day that will be remembered in Brookhaven for decades as the day the City closed on the funding for its generational plans to establish a sense of place and a City Center with work on the New City Hall at the Brookhaven/Oglethorpe MARTA station. Following 2 years of negotiation and engagement…
The firm’s local government law philosophy is to work with elected and appointed officials and to provide a pathway to accomplishing the policy goals they set for their city or county while assuring they are in compliance with their city’s or county’s charter and state and federal law. Sometimes it’s very hard to do both….
The City of Brookhaven undertook an unusual mechanism to fund infrastructure and construction of the 10 year old City’s first City Hall. By amending the Charter, the City Council clarified the apparent intent of the City’s Founders that only the taxes assessed to establish the City’s Annual General Fund budget were to be capped at…
We’re thrilled and honored to announce that Christopher Balch is the 2022 recipient of the International Municipal Lawyers Association (IMLA) Glink Private Practice Public Attorney Award. The Award recognizes a lawyer specializing in the representation of local governments, but in private practice, for outstanding contributions to the field of public agency law by representation of…
The firm is proud to announce that Chris Balch has again been named a Super Lawyer for Local Government Law. Super Lawyers are designated based on anonymous recommendations of peers from across the state and are awarded in a number of practice areas, from business litigation to personal injury, from worker’s compensation to mass torts….
Law Enforcement Aerial Assets (known to most people as helicopters) are expensive. Expensive to buy, store, maintain, and staff. How then does a local government, trying to expand and improve the ability of their police force to respond to emergencies, accomplish that goal?Drones.Unmanned Aerial Systems, UAS or drones, are expanding into law enforcement to save…
Thanks to everyone who contributed to WCLK Jazz 91.9 FM on our behalf!!! We didn’t win this year’s Signature Serenade competition, but we did make a big difference for the station. We also had a blast being the guest DJs even with a huge technical challenge.
Brookhaven has discussed creating a URA for several years, City Attorney Chris Balch told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Redevelopment agencies create another financing option for developers, who can use them to access tax-free loans. In return, the redevelopment agency has negotiating power over how new projects look and feel. This can vary from the construction materials used in…
By Christopher D. Balch By some estimates, as much as ten percent of the United States population is incarcerated. The cause of this mass imprisonment may be subject to debate (a debate well beyond the scope of this article); but the fact remains that as our citizenry ages, as its demograph- ics change, and as…