Kudos to someone who has served the State of Georgia with honor & distinction. - Reapportionment Office Director Linda Meggers.

This post is about someone most of you have never heard of unless you have enjoyed the privilege of being a public servant and office holder in Georgia on the local, state or national level.

In Saturday's hard copy of the ajc I learned that Sen. Tim Golden, of Valdosta and chairman of the Senate Democratic Caucus, and Sen. Robert Brown of Macon and Senate minority leader, along with Democratic Sens. Terrell Starr, Sam Zamarripa, David Adelman and Doug Stoner, have introduced Senate Resolution 55 honoring the work of the Legislative Reapportionment Services Office director Linda Meggers, who is retiring.

The resolution describes the Reapportionment Office as being charged with:

"the arduous and monumental task of providing, often on an around the clock basis, the technical and creative assistance necessary for the preparation of the legislative and congressional reapportionment bills and local bills reapportioning county commissioners, school boards, and municipal governing authorities."

In addition to the adjectives "arduous" and "monumental," I will add difficult.

The Reapportionment Office is a non-partisan service contracted through the University of Georgia’s Carl Vinson Institute of Government. As noted in the Senate resolution, it provides assistance for congressional, state legislative, county commission, local school board, and city council redistricting.

The Senate resolution commends retiring director Linda Meggers for "her remarkable patience and diplomacy," and notes that

"she is a person of magnanimous strengths with an unimpeachable reputation for integrity, intelligence, fairness, and kindness; [and] her loyalty, competency, reliability, and enthusiasm have distinguished her superlative service to this state . . ."

This and so much more could be said about this remarkable public servant.

Linda Meggers has always gone the extra mile in her service as director of this indispensable service provided to our state and local governments.

She and her staff had the expertise and the control over things we had to have to have to redistrict; but rather than having a haughty and I will get to you when I get to you attitude, she always let us know she was there to serve.

She has kept Georgia at the forefront in the latest technology and software necessary to generate and then revise, and then regenerate and revise again, over and over and over again, often late into the night and even into the wee hours of the morning, congressional and state and local district lines when reapportionment is undertaken.

And in addition to being most professional and diligent in the pursuit of any request thrown at her, she has another important characteristic that the resolution notes. She is one patient person. I often would joke with her that her middle name had to be Job.

I have never heard any person, Democrat or Republican, say anything but complimentary things about Linda and her tireless efforts in attacking the challenge at hand.

And in addition the politicians involved in redistricting and those such as myself who have worked with Linda as counsel to local governments, there is another group that has always had high praise for her work ethic, competency and diplomacy -- the judges before whom she has been a witness.

Linda, we are going to miss you, and for all the help and hand-holding you provided us over the years, a heartfelt word of thanks.

And also thanks so much to the named Democratic Senators for this deserved recognition.