Page 60 - DeKalb Bicentennial Flipbook

DEKALB COUNTY

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICERS

THE CHI EF EXECUTI VE OFFI CER STR UCTUR E
WAS I MPLEMENTED IN 1986.

Michael L. Thurmond

CEO DeKalb County, 2017 to Present

Michael L. Thurmond won a 2016 landslide victory
to become chief executive officer of DeKalb County.
Thurmond’s primary mission is restoring trust in county
government, adopting a balanced budget, ensuring accurate
water bills, removing blight, offering summer youth
employment, improving employee compensation, and
fulfilling the federal/state sewer consent agreement.
“One of the proudest moments of my public career – at a
critical moment in the history of the county – was to reunify
the county, restore trust in the government, and create a
more unified vision for the county,” Thurmond said.
As former superintendent of DeKalb schools, Thurmond
is credited with stabilizing the system during a governance
crisis, upgrading its threatened accreditation, eliminating a
multimillion-dollar deficit, and improving student academic Political Executives program at the John F. Kennedy School

performance and graduation rates. of Government at Harvard University.
Thurmond was raised as a sharecropper’s son in Clarke Thurmond’s latest book, Freedom: Georgia’s Antislavery
County, Georgia. He graduated with honors with a Bachelor Heritage, 1733-1865, was awarded the Georgia Historical
of Arts in philosophy and religion from Paine College and Society’s Lilla Hawes Award. The Georgia Center for the
later earned a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Book listed Freedom as one of “The 25 Books All Georgians
South Carolina’s School of Law. He also completed the Should Read” in 2004.

58 Sp i rit o f D eK alb – B i centen n ial 1822-2022