Georgia Statutes Summary
All statutes noted in this summary are current through the 1998 session of the Georgia General Assembly and are from an unannotated version. Georgia's State Constitution gives zoning and ordinance making authority to counties and cities (GA. CONST. art. IX, § 2, para. 4.). State guidance to local governments on zoning and planning comes from the zoning procedures found in GA. CODE §§ 36-66-1 through 36-66-5, and the Georgia Planning Act of 1989 §§ 50-8-1 et. seq. The Georgia Planning Act establishes regional development centers whose function is to oversee and assist counties and municipalities with the development of comprehensive land use plans. These centers ensure that local governments meet minimum standards for the preparation and implementation of plans including the participation of stakeholders in their development. Plans must include minimum elements, such as natural resources, housing, the environment, and economic development. These elements are listed in §12-2-8.
For counties with populations greater than 500,000, and municipalities within those counties with populations greater than 100,000, there is an additional zoning law, §§ 36-67-1 through 67-6 that allows these more urbanized areas to adapt zoning procedures for their conditions. One zoning requirement for the 500,000+ counties is that anyone other than a local government that initiates a rezoning must file a written analysis of the impacts of the zoning including those impacts on the areas surrounding the property to be rezoned. This is not a requirement for the basic zoning procedures for smaller local governments.
Georgia's right-to-farm law, § 41-1-7, prohibits an agricultural operation from being deemed a nuisance because of a change in conditions surrounding that operation; unless it is operated negligently, improperly, or illegally.
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 E-mail: Ted_Feitshans@ncsu.edu |
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