Three partners. All of us do the work.

Why this firm exists

Land-use lawyers handle the entitlement. Engineers handle the site. Public relations firms handle the press release. Nobody owns the community relationship.

Georgia is hosting an extraordinary amount of new capital investment, and the counties being asked to host it are asking sharper questions than they were asked to answer a decade ago — about water, about power and who pays for it, about what happens when the facility is obsolete. Those are reasonable questions. Projects are failing not because the questions are unanswerable but because nobody was assigned to answer them, early, in public, in writing.

Between us, decades of work with the state agencies, utilities, county commissions, and development authorities now weighing these proposals — and the ability to write down what a developer promises in language a community can hold them to. That combination is the firm.

We take the community half of it seriously on its own terms, not as a risk to be managed. A county that gets a fair process and enforceable commitments has been treated well whether it says yes or no. That is the standard we are willing to be judged against.

Partner

Bernard H. Reynolds

Bernard has spent more than thirty years working across the three constituencies that decide whether a project gets built: state government, the utilities that serve it, and the county officials and residents who live with it.

From 2003 to 2006 he served as Assistant Commissioner of the Georgia Department of Community Affairs, where he was Executive Director of the Governor's Georgia Rural Development Council. That work put him in direct, sustained contact with county commissions, development authorities, chambers, and civic leadership in the rural counties now receiving the state's largest data center proposals.

He then managed state and federal legislative and regulatory affairs for Georgia Electric Membership Corporation, the statewide association of the electric cooperatives serving most of rural Georgia. Earlier he worked at Southern Company, where he handled federal legislative affairs and managed the political action committees for the operating subsidiaries, and at Georgia Power as a policy analyst in governmental affairs.

That background means he can speak credibly to a developer about large-load interconnection and to a county commissioner about what a substation actually means for the tax digest — and be understood by both.

Since 2008 he has been principal of True North Strategies, a statewide Georgia government affairs and grassroots firm.

He holds an MBA from Brenau University and a BA in Political Science from the University of Georgia. He serves on the boards of the Georgia Professional Lobbyists Association and the Epilepsy Foundation of Georgia.

bernard@hostcommunitypartners.com404-862-5615

Partner

Ellen Williams Reynolds

Ellen is an attorney with nearly three decades of Georgia policy practice, with deep subject expertise across taxation, healthcare, transportation, education, child protection, and domestic violence.

Over her career she has secured more than $60 million in funding for clients — work that requires understanding not just how public money moves, but how to construct a package of commitments that decision-makers will approve and then defend in public. That skill transfers directly to the central work product of this practice: a community benefits agreement specific enough to be enforceable and credible enough that a county commission can stand behind it.

She has been appointed by the Governor to multiple state committees and served on Georgia's Education Reform Commission. Because school district revenue is consistently the strongest local argument for and against a large capital project — and the one most often mishandled — her command of education and local fiscal policy is directly load-bearing in a siting conversation.

Her client work spans national and regional organizations. Much of it has involved building and sustaining coalitions with community-based nonprofits and local advocates, which is the same work, with the same methods, that determines whether a host community trusts a developer.

She began her career in civil defense litigation. She holds a Juris Doctor from the University of Georgia School of Law and a BA in Psychology from the University of Alabama.

ellen@hostcommunitypartners.com404-556-1999

Ellen is an attorney, but Host Community Partners does not practice law and does not provide legal advice to clients or to communities. Nothing on this site creates an attorney-client relationship.

Partner

Michael A. Beatty

Mike most recently served as Director of the USDA's Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, where he led outreach to faith-based and community organizations, working with local, state, and federal partners on the challenges facing rural communities.

In Georgia he served as Commissioner of the Department of Community Affairs under two Governors — appointed by Gov. Sonny Perdue in 2003 and reappointed by Gov. Nathan Deal in 2011 — and represented Northeast Georgia in both the Georgia House and the Georgia Senate.

He is the founder and former President and CEO of Great Promise Partnership, a workforce initiative for at-risk youth with a 98 percent success rate, and served on the Governor's State Workforce Development Board. Before that he taught history and coached football in Northeast Georgia for eight years, and he and his wife, Judy, have farmed poultry and cattle.

He lives in Jefferson. State agency, legislature, classroom, small business, and farm — he has seen a rural county's decision from most of the sides it gets made from.

mike@hostcommunitypartners.com

Disclosures

Affiliations and ethics

Which side we are on. We work one side per county — a developer or a community in a given county, never both. We act for developers and we act for counties, development authorities, and regional organizations — never both in the same county, and never sequentially in one while the other is live. Every prospective engagement is checked in writing against a log of active matters before it is accepted.The rule in full.

Related practice. Bernard is principal of True North Strategies, a Georgia government affairs and grassroots firm. Where an engagement touches both firms, the relationship is disclosed to the client and, where it bears on our public role, publicly. Conflict screening covers both.

Registered lobbying. Bernard and Ellen both have registered Georgia lobbying practice. Any activity in an engagement that constitutes lobbying under Georgia law is registered and disclosed as required, and we answer directly when asked whether a particular contact was registered.

Professional service. Bernard serves on the boards of the Georgia Professional Lobbyists Association and the Epilepsy Foundation of Georgia. Ellen has served on gubernatorially appointed state committees including Georgia's Education Reform Commission.

Political activity. Personal political activity by any partner that is relevant to a jurisdiction where we hold an engagement is disclosed to the client, and publicly where it bears on our public role.