Atlanta tax hike: Profiles in cowardice
Sleepy Jim Maddox double-crossed his colleagues as Council votes for tax increase
The Atlanta City Council voted today to raise property taxes by 3 mills, an outcome we’d been predicting for weeks. But the actual vote count — 8 to 7 — was closer than anyone expected it to be. Not because Council members believed the tax hike was a bad idea. Hell, with only one or two possible exceptions, even those who voted against it were privately praying it would pass.
No, the vote was so close because several of our Council members possess, as Teddy Roosevelt once said, “the backbone of a chocolate eclair.”
Exhibit A is Jim “40 Winks” Maddox, the self-proclaimed “Dean of the Council” because he’s warmed a chair in City Hall for more than three long decades. Today, Maddox shocked his colleagues by voting against the tax hike and the $541 million budget. This is a guy who, two months ago, said publicaly that he didn’t think Mayor Franklin’s proposed 3-mill increase was big enough!
“I’m prepared to approve a tax increase to end the furloughs for all employees,” he announced at a budget hearing at the end of April.
But that was before he picked up three challengers for his beloved Council seat. So, today, without giving anyone a heads up, the lily-livered Maddox cravenly hung his colleagues out to dry.