In last fall’s campaign to be mayor of Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms had to dance a delicate line. On the one hand, she had to reassure angry voters that she was sincere when she talked about addressing serious issues of corruption in the city bureaucracy uncovered in a major federal investigation. In sending that message, though, Bottoms had another audience that she had to please in the person of outgoing Mayor Kasim Reed, her chief ally and champion and the man who had allowed that corruption to fester.
As a result of that attempted tightrope walk by Bottoms, I couldn’t bring myself to vote for her. I thought at the time that the contradiction was too great, that we still didn’t know the full extent of scandals being uncovered at City Hall and that under the circumstances it was too risky to install a new mayor beholden to Reed. However, by a narrow margin, Atlanta voters disagreed with that assessment, and Bottoms took office in January.
Now, less than five months later, some of those fears are proving valid. With Reed no longer wielding dictatorial control from the mayor’s office, tongues are loosening and internal emails, text messages and other documents and evidence are being pried free. The small window into City Hall operations provided so far by the federal investigation is being expanded into a picture window, and what it’s revealing is not pretty.
We now know that Reed and his top operatives did not merely break or ignore the state Open Records Law. They kicked it, laughed at it and treated it with total disrespect. They acted as if the mayor and his administration were above the law, and the contempt that Reed often showed for anyone who tried to criticize or hold him accountable clearly infected much of his staff, who became reflections of the man they served.
Sure, the mayor and his people treated the media with contempt, but we already knew that and frankly, it comes with the job. But these revelations confirm the strong suspicion that they also treated the law with contempt, they treated the public with contempt, they treated the City Council with contempt.
They also didn’t treat taxpayers’ money with the respect it deserves, using it to reward themselves and each other, as that grotesque $500,000 “bonus party” for Reed loyalists demonstrated. That too reflected a tone set from the top, by Reed himself. We now know that he abused his city expense account, using it for personal purchases and luxury expenditures and attempting to repay those funds only after it became clear that his extravagance on the public dime would become public. Even if Reed escapes prosecution in ongoing state and federal investigations, voters should have learned enough to ensure that he never holds public office again.
In short, Mayor Bottoms, the time for walking delicate lines has passed. Choose a side and make the break. This is your chance to prove your doubters wrong. Tell the people of Atlanta and the surrounding region in no uncertain terms that what happened under the Reed administration was wrong, that the law-breaking and contempt will not be tolerated. The pledges that you’ve made to cooperate with these investigations are not sufficient, because of course you’ll cooperate -- you have no choice.
You do have the choice of playing a more pro-active, aggressive role in this cleansing process, to make it clear to city staff and leadership and to the greater Atlanta public this will not be the third term of the Reed administration, as some have described it, but something new and more healthy. Seize this opportunity, because it won’t last long and has already begun to close.
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