Sunday, October 25, 2009
Opinion, Politics, Atlanta

Good stewardship and the mayor's race

A re-endorsement

By Stephanie Ramage

I have for the most part managed to tune out my mother’s religious admonitions over the years, but a few maxims here and there have stayed with me. One is this: If you are a good steward over the things that God gives you, he will bless you with more things over which to be a good steward.

A “steward” is a caretaker, so if you take good care of the responsibilities you have, God, or whatever power you believe in, will see to it that you get more responsibility. That’s a practical maxim to apply to people in general. Applying it to candidates in Atlanta’s mayoral race on Aug. 24, I chose to endorse Kasim Reed.

As painstakingly detailed by Atlanta Journal-Constitution writer Margaret Newkirk in the Oct. 19 story “Georgia often sneers as Atlanta struggles,” the City of Atlanta has gotten precious little from the state in the way of support.

But what little the city has managed to scrounge has come to it largely through the efforts of State Sen. Reed. Against all odds, facing a Republican majority at the Capitol and an overwhelming rural-suburban power alliance, Reed, a Democrat, went to work getting to know those Republican legislators, becoming acquainted with their districts’ challenges, and figuring out where he might share common ground with them.

Using the state's credit rating, he landed low-interest loans to overhaul the city’s water system. He co-authored the state’s hate crimes law. He successfully pushed a measure to allow MARTA access to its own funds through the Senate, only to have it fail in the notoriously lunatic state House. He did what he could with what he had. He was a good steward.

Candidate Lisa Borders has lately tried to lay claim to good relationships at the Capitol in an effort to gain some equality on that score with Reed. But as Borders herself told the State Ethics Commission in May of this year, her duties as a senior vice president of marketing for Cousins Properties included “responding to all requests for civic, cultural, and charitable contributions,” and “establishing positive relationships with elected and appointed officials.” When Borders was helping choose who got Cousins’ money, no doubt she did have some pretty good relationships. But if she’s elected mayor, she will not be dispensing money, she will be begging for it.

As City Council president, Borders has had only three basic duties: to preside over meetings, break tie votes, and appoint committees. Since she began running for mayor, Borders has had the peculiar advantage of being able to pick and choose the legislation for which she’d like to retroactively take credit. The council president doesn’t vote, and there was never a tie vote, so the public has no way of knowing what she really supported.

Although she could have, at any time, used her position to speak out on issues before the council, Borders has spoken out only twice: Once in 2008 to oppose a modest half-mill tax increase that would have prevented police and fire furloughs, and once in 2009 to support a three-mill tax increase intended to end the furloughs—the very furloughs that she and the council she claims to have led made necessary in the first place.

Borders has presided over the council as the Atlanta Police have suffered through one of the worst chapters in their history. During Borders’ tenure, the officers were deprived of their step-pay increases every year except one. And what did she do or say about it? Nothing.

Has candidate and Councilwoman Mary Norwood been a good steward? Norwood voted against that same half-mill property tax increase in 2008, and in 2009, when a tax increase was the only expeditious way to end the police furloughs, Norwood—along with a handful of other council members—voted against the increase, safe in the knowledge that there were enough votes to pass the tax hike in order to end the furloughs without her politically risking herself. That’s called political cowardice.

I have asked Norwood many times how she intended to end the furloughs without a tax increase, and she has always said that she didn’t know, but that if the citizens would elect her mayor, she’d find out. Well, that would be too late.

Norwood points to reams of paperwork from City Hall and says she doesn’t understand where the city’s money goes, but she plans to find out. Yet Norwood has been at City Hall for eight years. My son went from crawling to playing soccer in eight years. Surely Norwood could have gotten her questions answered in that time; she had access to the budget—she voted on it each and every year.

She says she has had no power to do a good job in her present job, so the citizens should give her a better one. It shouldn’t work that way. She has failed in her stewardship. Why reward failure?

Exercising good stewardship is being accountable, not looking good and speaking smoothly like Borders, or being cute and friendly like Norwood. If Atlanta’s troubles could have been solved with good looks and smooth talking, Mayor Bill Campbell would have made it a veritable Paris. If being cute and friendly would do the job, then Mayor Shirley Franklin would not be ending her second term with the city mired in debt, lawsuits, and crime.

Atlanta is at a point in its history when it desperately needs a straight-talking, no-nonsense workhorse of a mayor who has already proven that he can help the city. And the only candidate who fits that bill is Kasim Reed. SP