When Atlanta’s mayor ripped into the Fulton County justice system earlier this month, he was bashing Commission Chairman John Eaves’ baby.
How Eaves responded spoke volumes about his leadership style — a decidedly soft approach to Atlanta’s rough-and-tumble politics — and the limitations of his office. He defended the system, but he wouldn’t lash back at the mayor.
Eaves has made getting the county jail out from under federal oversight the cornerstone of his second term in office, bringing judges, prosecutors and the Sheriff’s Office together to move inmates through the system faster, and steering them to alternative sentencing, to free up beds in the lockup and save taxpayers millions of dollars per year.
Mayor Kasim Reed, frustrated by a series of high-profile crimes, called it a "turnstile jail" and said judges treat criminals "with more respect than they treat law-abiding citizens."
Eaves’ staffers urged him to hit back — perhaps pointing out that Reed’s administration has demanded steep prices when the county has tried to buy the city’s little-used jail or rent bed space.
“It was a tremendous oversimplification of the situation,” Eaves said later of Reed’s attack. “I felt that a different response would have led to an outcome that was unproductive.”
Reed expressed frustration at Eaves’ lack of authority, and how he wields what little authority he has.
“There’s nobody to deal with because they have no individual leader who is capable of making an agreement,” Reed told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I like John Eaves and I think he is a decent man. But in order to work with someone they have to be able to deliver a majority (vote).”
A leader with limits
Call him Fulton County’s man who would be chief.
As chairman, Eaves is the titular leader of Georgia’s largest local government, serving a population bigger than seven U.S. states.
If that should make Eaves as important a figure as the Atlanta mayor, it doesn’t. Under the current government structure, the job brings little power and part-time pay.
The chairman often answers to the news media for the county’s myriad embarrassments, such as elections breakdowns, but he faces an uphill fight if he wants to fix anything. Not much gets done without four votes of a fractious seven-member commission.
That could change soon.
Fulton’s lack of a centralized leader has been cited as a contributor to dysfunction, and state lawmakers have talked for years about beefing up the chairman’s powers, giving him full-time status and power to hire and fire department heads and the county manager (with the consent of a majority of commissioners). The proposal is on the agenda for next year’s legislative session, when north Fulton Republicans resume their crusade to reshape the county’s government.
Measures passed earlier this year included bills that made firing employees easier and raising taxes harder. A redistricting plan that gives north Fulton another vote on the County Commission faces a federal civil rights challenge by Southside Democrats.
With Fulton commission incumbents historically tough to beat at the polls, new powers for the chairman would likely fall to Eaves. He said he doubts Republicans will grant them while a Democrat holds the seat, but his efforts to prove that he represents all of Fulton could pay off.
“With the limitations he’s worked under — he has very little authority — I think he’s done quite well in that position,” said state Rep. Wendell Willard, R-Sandy Springs. “I keep telling the legislators, ‘Let’s not look at the faces, let’s look at the system.’ ”
As striking as the seat’s shortage of power is its lack of respect, and no chairman in recent decades has struggled with that more than Eaves, a soft-spoken intellectual with a background in the Peace Corps. He won the post in 2006 amid the forming of four new cities as part of a tax revolt, which ate away at both Fulton’s unincorporated area and the perceived significance of the county government.
He’s faced blowback from other commissioners for even the slightest flexing of muscle. For the most part, Eaves has adopted a conciliatory style of leadership, preferring the role of peacemaker to warrior.
“To me, my personal style fits into the limitations of the position,” Eaves said. “I’m not sure if it’s a position of power, but it’s a position of influence.”
Some county leaders, however, say that influence might be greater if the chairman used more force.
“He’s a peaceful person. It’s something I happen to admire about him,” Johns Creek Mayor Mike Bodker said. “But I think when you are chairing the meeting, sometimes you have to be willing to bang the gavel and bang it hard. And — this is tongue in cheek — sometimes you have to be willing to throw the gavel.”
Nice guy finishes first
Eaves, 51, grew up in Jacksonville, Fla., a third-generation Jewish African-American. His grandfather converted after immigrating from Jamaica in 1913. Eaves said his religion has taught him a lot about perseverance and enduring persecution.
He moved to Atlanta in the late 1970s to attend Morehouse College, where he played cornerback for the Maroon Tigers football team. Even then he had a pacifist bent, he said. When he knocked another player flat, he felt obliged to help him up.
He later got a master’s degree in religion at Yale University, then a doctorate in educational administration from the University of South Carolina. He spent seven years as the Atlanta-based regional manager for the Peace Corps. He has written two books about Morehouse.
He now works as a consultant for TalentQuest, coaching corporate executives on managing employees. Eaves has a 17-year-old son, a 13-year-old daughter and a 12-year-old stepson. When he got married for the second time three years ago, Reed gave a toast.
The politician Eaves rose out of Atlanta’s black Democratic machine of the mid-2000s. Then-Mayor Shirley Franklin appointed him to the Atlanta Sister Cities Commission in 2003, and a year later he ran for the City Council and lost.
In 2006, on the eve of the qualifying deadline, he got a late-night call from state Sen. Vincent Fort, D-Atlanta, urging him to run for commission chairman. Eaves said he was also encouraged by Reed, then a state senator.
He defeated Republican Lee Morris that year with 57 percent of the vote, becoming the first Democrat to hold the seat since 1993.
In his first term, he irked some Democratic backers by supporting a reconfiguration of Grady Memorial Hospital that prevented a financial collapse but gave control to a corporate board. Eaves won a second term, defeating north Fulton Republican Steve Broadbent with 60 percent of the vote.
Switching to offense
For any reform-minded politician, the job’s best asset is the bully pulpit.
Mitch Skandalakis, who held the position from 1993 to 1998, used to call news conferences to fire accusations about perceived wrongdoings. Karen Handel, who served from 2003 to 2006, once handed the media an alternative budget to the one drawn up by staff as part of campaign to prevent a tax rate increase.
Eaves hasn’t called any querulous news conferences, but he has taken some tough stances, with mixed results.
He once tried to take over a microphone kill switch so he could silence the long-winded diatribes of Commissioner Emma Darnell during meetings. Bill Edwards, south Fulton’s commissioner, countermanded his orders to the county manager to rewire the button, pointing out that Eaves has no more power than him.
Darnell called Eaves a thug and a bully, and Commissioner Robb Pitts publicly likened him to Algonquin J. Calhoun, a crooked lawyer character on “Amos ‘n’ Andy.”
He objected when the state gave him no more power on the T-SPLOST roundtable than county and city leaders with far fewer constituents, but he still campaigned for the doomed transportation tax proposal.
He took his strongest stand yet this year as the north Fulton GOP bills made their way through the legislative process. Finally dropping the platitudes, he called the efforts “mean-spirited” and partly driven by race.
Then he rallied his peers in other counties, including Democrats and Republicans, to sign a letter to Gov. Nathan Deal asking him to veto the legislation, most notably a bill that will prohibit the county from raising property taxes for the next two years. Deal declined, suggesting Fulton brought its problems upon itself.
“I think he realizes now that at the state Capitol, regardless of what they say publicly, their real goal is to strip Fulton County of its authority and powers and form Milton County,” Fort said of Republicans.
More recently, Eaves suggested that Tax Commissioner Arthur Ferdinand, the state’s highest paid elected official, let some other employee use a $39,000 SUV that he dipped into his office budget to buy. Ferdinand brushed him off, pointing out that Eaves is just one commissioner and saying he wouldn’t even consider turning the vehicle in unless told to by the whole board.
The narrow way
Another limitation of the job: With little ability to push an agenda, it’s no guaranteed springboard to higher office. During the past three decades, only Handel has pulled that off, going on to become Georgia’s secretary of state. She’s now running for the U.S. Senate.
Eaves says he has no such aspirations but will seek a third term.
At a recent meeting with his staff of five, the jail came up, and Eaves unveiled his plan. He’s forming a Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, and he wants the Atlanta Police Department at the table. Rather than go to war, he’ll bring the city into the fold.
“I just refuse to get down into some of the brass knuckles of politics,” Eaves said. “I think, at the end of the day, people want folks to get along, to work toward a common goal.
“And that’s how I am.”
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