Sunday, June 21, 2009 | Opinion, Politics, Atlanta
SP Culpability

Two of the leading mayoral candidates presided over tax cuts that helped trigger Atlanta’s present financial mess.

Last week’s sparsely attended public hearing on a proposed tax increase. City Council President Lisa Borders (left) and Councilwoman Mary Norwood (right) were not present

By Stephanie Ramage

The Atlanta City Council chamber was, as usual, mostly empty last Thursday morning during a public hearing on a proposed 3-millage-point tax hike. About a dozen citizens sat in the audience, and as they got up to speak it became clear that most were neighbors who’d teamed up to weigh in on their area’s issue—the depressing slump in condo valuation, which, they feel, justifies opposition to any tax increase.

A couple of others from the southwest side of the city said they want police and fire furloughs to end, but they wished they didn’t have to pay more taxes to make that happen.

In answer to such sentiments, council members have often made two points:

 1. The City Council has rolled back taxes every year for the past seven years, even as the city has grown by more than 20 percent, so that in 2008 the city’s millage was 38 percent less than it was in 1993.

2. There has been so little transparency in the city’s financial dealings that not even the City Council members have known how the city’s money was being spent.

I would be embarrassed to make those points if I were them. Why would they roll back taxes if they didn’t even know for sure how much money the city required? Why didn’t they demand financial transparency? Isn’t that why the citizens elected them? To keep an eye on things down at City Hall while the taxpayers were working?

If so, then how is it possible that two members of the council who have presided for the past several years over the debacle that is Atlanta’s city government say they plan to bring a whole new game to town if elected mayor? That would be Council President Lisa Borders and At-Large Councilwoman Mary Norwood. Borders was elected in 2004;  Norwood in 2001. Even though the economy’s pain was obvious in 2008, when the council voted on a budget for 2009, Norwood voted to cut taxes, a move that led to fire and police furloughs, and Borders, whose position as council president precludes her vote except in instances where she acts as a tie-breaker, said nothing against the cut.

Could the mayor have found another way?

It is possible that money could have been shifted out of less-critical city functions and into public safety. With things like the mayor’s Brand Atlanta campaign being deemed worthy of tax revenue, clearly there was some wiggle room in the budget in recent years and, ultimately, it was the mayor who decided to balance the books on the backs of the police officers.

But if Borders or Norwood felt they could cut taxes and maintain full staffing levels in public safety, I don’t recall them ever pointing out how exactly that would work. Yet, I hear from residents who say they think Borders or Norwood will improve Atlanta’s fortunes.

I am told the council president can do nothing, that the position itself is limited in its scope. Borders can appoint committee heads and break tie votes. It is also her charge to maintain the council’s relationship with the mayor. As for Norwood, no individual council member can be expected to swing much weight in a 15-member body. But would we ever accept such excuses from members of Congress running for the presidency, or members of the state legislature running for governor? Would it be plausible that a legislator aspiring to higher office was simply too junior to have much clout, or that he or she served on all the wrong committees?

There’s something to be said just for saying something, just demanding details, when you don’t necessarily have the power to do something. But Borders and Norwood did do something: When the mayor—yes, I am about to say something almost nice about her, so brace yourselves—asked for a tax increase last year that would have maintained public safety funding, the council, including Norwood, and with no public opposition from Borders, voted for a tax cut instead. 

It’s easier to curry favor with the voters through a tax cut than a tax increase, of course. But how could anyone go through with that vote, not having the vaguest idea about where the city’s finances stood? And if they didn’t know public safety would be affected, my question would be, why didn’t they know? Under the circumstances, why didn’t they just  leave the tax rate alone?

After last week’s public hearing, I talked with Chief Financial Officer Jim Glass, who’s leaving at the end of this administration, after a very short tenure. His loss will be a greater blow to the city than the loss of any of those now serving in elected positions. Glass, as is fitting for someone with that name, has brought transparency to Atlanta’s historically opaque and byzantine finances—and he did it in about eight months. What his openness has revealed is a city in dire financial straits. While it’s true that furloughs for police officers and firefighters could be ended with an injection of less than $13 million, the city requires $43 million more than that just to meet budget.

“I can tell you, as will the [bond] rating agencies, that this City has a revenue problem and is overdue having an increase in property taxes,” Glass writes in an e-mail. “The fact is financial health for the City will not be achieved with simply this budget—it will take a multi-year approach. This is the first step and the revenue problem must be addressed this fiscal year.”

Who will Atlantans trust to oversee the city’s recovery in the years ahead? The same people who didn’t check the details as they voted for tax cuts and paved the way for the city’s current financial distress? What other choice do the city’s voters have? Is there anyone out there who can be trusted who has not, as yet, entered the mayor’s race? SP

This article was has been corrected. The print version attributes a yea vote on the tax cut for the FY 2009 budget to Council President Lisa Borders. She did not vote on the budget. We regret the error.