Fresh Loaf

Mayor Shirley Franklin announced Monday that the city had found someone willing to take over Atlanta’s very troubled finance department. You’ll remember that the city’s last CFO, Janice Davis, flew the coop to take a job in Texas a few months into Atlanta’s well-publicized budget meltdown.

Pending Council approval, the next CFO looks to be one Jim Glass, a retired 29-year veteran of various Bellsouth divisions who most recently served as CFO and vice president of finance for AT&T Mobility. I’ve been told Glass wasn’t the city’s first choice; the job had been offered to other retired corporate financial executives, who turned it down. But one Council member explained that the city is in desperate straights and will gladly take any qualified candidate who’s willing to sign up for a thankless job.

How thankless is it? Well, for starters, he’ll be expected to begin reforming budget practices that Davis herself, while she was still overseeing them, said deserved a grade of F. Add to that the fact that the city CFO answers not only to the mayor, but to the Council, whose members are not above a bit of grandstanding and politicking. Consider finally that this is only a 14-month gig, until the next mayor takes office.

Why would any retiree need this headache? Next month, when Glass is expected to be sworn in, you can ask him.

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Much wailing and gnashing of teeth has been heard in Atlanta over a potential property-tax hike. Fair enough; no one likes paying higher taxes. But relatively little public attention has been paid to the prospect of higher water rates, which will end up costing the average homeowner more than 10 times as much.

At around 1 p.m. today at a special-called meeting, the City Council approved a new water/sewer rate schedule for the next four years that will cause the average monthly household water bill to jump next month from about $85 to $105, a 27-percent increase.

This new rate includes a 15-percent increase to make up for lower revenue due to water conservation. Last year, this measure was introduced with the label “drought surcharge” and people went crazy: The city asked us to conserve water and now it’s punishing us for doing so!

Instead, the city simply rolled it into the new rates, but we’ll pay it just the same. Rates will continue to climb 12.5 percent for the following three years, until we’re eventually paying an average of $143 a month for water.

Council members had debated the water rate increases for weeks; some even hinted they would vote against them. But, in the end, the vote was 13-0; the only amendment calls for an audit of the $4 billion sewer program. Why did everyone finally get on board? Mainly, because they didn’t really have a choice.

The rate hike was necessary to abide by the federal consent decree that mandates the sewer improvements. If the council had voted down the new rates, Federal Judge Tom Thrash could have put the entire program in receivership.

At one point, Council member Kwanza Hall asked city finance chief Janice Davis what would happen if the rates weren’t raised.

Davis’ answer: “The city’s bonds would be downgraded to junk.”

Well, alrighty, then!

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It’s no fun right now to be Atlanta Chief Financial Officer Janice Davis.

No surprise here, but Davis is high on the list of those being blamed for the fiscal crisis that just prompted Mayor Shirley Franklin to lay off more than 400 city workers and propose a $40 million tax increase.

For her part, Davis has publicly pointed the finger at Atlanta’s longstanding accounting practices; city bureaucrats who don’t follow vending procedures; department heads who overspend their budgets; and her own staff. But, unless we missed something, she has yet to claim responsibility for mistakes that helped derail the city budget – which, in turn, has some Council members feeling less forgiving toward her.

According to City Hall scuttlebutt, there’s a tug-of-war going on now between Council members who want to give Davis the sack and those who believe the city would be in deeper doo-doo if it gets rid of her.

As one nervous Council member puts it: “Janice is one of three people who understands the Mayor’s proposed budget [the others being Chief Operating Officer Greg Giornelli and Franklin herself] and the only one who answers to us. If she leaves, we’re screwed.”

Right now, the ones calling for Davis’ head are a distinct minority. But if one of them were to make an official proposal that she be fired, the other Council members would be forced into the politically awkward position of a public vote a year before city elections.

Voting to keep Davis could be criticized as tolerating incompetence, while canning her could destroy any chance of coming up with a workable solution to the budget problems. Come to think of it, it can’t be much fun being a Council member right now.

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