Fresh Loaf

Mayor Shirley Franklin called a press conference today to discuss city finances, then, as soon as it began, told reporters, “There won’t be any big news here.”

Great. And I stopped watching a video of kittens riding a Roomba for this?

As it was, the mayor and Atlanta Chief Financial Officer Jim “I Don’t Need This Job” Glass discussed a range of topics in the service of, as Shirley said, “fiscal transparency.” Here’s a short list:

• The Fulton County Tax Assessors’ office is running late in sending out tax bills this year because of an unprecedented deluge of property appraisal appeals. The later the process lags, the later the city gets its tax revenue, which raises the danger of a short-term shortfall.
• The city is seeking a crazy half-billion dollars in federal stimulus funds. So far, a more reasonable $42 million has been approved. Among the city’s wish-list items is $13 million to install 400 CCTV cameras on public streets across the city in an effort to combat crime. While public video surveillance is commonplace in the UK, Americans typically don’t take kindly to being watched in that manner.
• The city has issued $58 million in tax-anticipation notes, a form of short-term bond designed to float city operations while it waits to collect taxes. The TANs are due to be paid off by Dec. 31, so the city is hoping the county gets its tax-bill-issuing butt in gear…

Buried somewhere in all this were the July budget figures. Glass announced that city revenues had come in about $1 million lower than expected, but had bettered spending projections by close to $7 million.

It wasn’t until after the conference that a city official reminded me of the significance of Glass’ announcement. Only a year ago, when Atlanta was frantically slashing payroll to stave off a budget deficit, the city’s woebegone finance department couldn’t produce reliable annual budget figures — forget about monthly. In terms of accounting practices and budget controls, it would seem that City Hall has made considerable progress.

Unless, of course, you ask Councilmember and mayoral hopeful Mary Norwood. Shortly after the mayor’s presentation, Norwood put out a press release expressing outrage over what she called “another egregious case of financial mismanagement at City Hall.”

It seems that a city employee neglected to make a timely payment to a city vendor, which resulted in an $80,000 fine the city is contractually obligated to pay. When Glass was asked about the snafu, he called the result of a “miscommunication” and said the employee had been punished.

But, as Norwood countered:

“$80,000 isn’t a ‘miscommunication. It’s a new Police Officer on the beat protecting your family and a raise for experienced officers so they stay in Atlanta instead of going out to the suburbs.”

Norwood finished by asserting she would bring “better management and accountability.”

But Norwood undercut her argument by citing, as an example of financial mismanagement by City Hall, the problems of the Atlanta Renewal Community Coordinating Responsible Authority (ACoRA).  As the AJC recently reported, ACoRA will likely be forced to return about $30 million in federal grants. But Norwood apparently doesn’t grasp — or is being intentionally misleading — that the ACoRA program is a free-standing entity with an independent board (hence the title “authority”); City Hall has no say in how those grants are doled out.

If Norwood is that confused about who runs what programs, I’m not sure how she intends to effect better accountability.

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Tags: Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, budget-shortfall, Councilwoman Mary Norwood, Fulton County Tax Assessors.