An hour after he pushed a $547 million budget through the Atlanta City Council and a day after coaxing council members to vote 15-0 to overhaul the city’s pension plan, Mayor Kasim Reed sat in a conference room Thursday and ate dinner with them.
It was self-serve, so he made his own plate of ziti and salad while casually chatting, laughing and hugging the very council members who had bitterly battled him for months over the pension system. Two reporters waited outside for him, but he took his time, savoring the moment.
Reed’s victory in the pension debate — closely followed by national leaders — is a triumph the mayors of many other major U.S. cities are still trying to achieve. It has the potential to position his tenure in office as a period of historic change.
While perhaps eyeing a grander stage, less than two years in office Reed is already establishing a presence on the national stage, especially through television appearances. And now that he has pushed through the pension overhaul, the word “legacy” is starting to get thrown around.
“It is important for the mayor of Atlanta to have an imprint,” said Roland Martin, the host of “Washington Watch” and a CNN contributor. “One of my biggest criticisms about national conversations is that you are not hearing from local officials. You get Cabinet officials, governors, members of the House and Senate. Rarely are you looking at mayors. He is becoming that voice. If you’re out of sight, you’re out of mind. You lose.”
Reed hates to lose. Just don’t talk to him about legacy.
“I don’t think about that at all. That is how you lose,” Reed said. “When you look at our performance, a lot of it has to do with movement and continuing to go on to the next thing. I have basically been working to do what I said I would do, and I view this as a part of it. When you start congratulating yourself too much, you get hit in the chin, and that is not where I am.”
To prove his point that he has moved on, Reed notes that on Wednesday, the same day of the pension vote, he signed the closing documents to sell City Hall East.
“That is going to be a transformational project for the Ponce de Leon corridor. My mind is already on to finalizing that project,” Reed said. “And I can tell you two other initiatives that we’re working on now. With this administration, it is on to the next thing.”
But let’s back up a bit.
When Reed was elected in 2009, before he was even inaugurated, he formed a panel to help solve Atlanta’s $1.5 billion problem of unfunded pension liabilities. It was a problem shared by dozens of local governments throughout metro Atlanta and across the country.
“It is a good start,” said Laura Quinby of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. “Any city that has an underfunded pension plan putting undue pressure on the budget should contemplate reform.”
After months of debate and fights, the council unanimously passed sweeping changes to retirement benefits for city employees while shrinking pension liabilities, establishing a 401(k)-type plan for workers and requiring them to give more out of their checks toward their pensions. Actuaries say it will save Atlanta $270 million over the next decade and more than $500 million over the next 30 years.
The budget approved Thursday included taking some of that money and improving city services, including adding 100 more sworn police officers.
“I commend the city for holding on to the core elements of the traditional pension. Those elements not only will promote the retirement security of Atlanta city workers but also will continue to enable the city to attract and retain qualified workers needed to perform essential public services,” said Keith Brainard, research director at the National Association of State Retirement Administrators.
Brainard said Atlanta has done what cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Philadelphia are still trying to achieve.
In changing Atlanta’s pension structure, Reed has managed to keep a spotlight on the city. In his first two years in office, he has traveled extensively — mostly to Washington, D.C. — to meet with President Barack Obama and Cabinet members. He usually brings money home with him. In 2010 he made 27 trips out of the city, resulting in more than $134 million in federal dollars committed to Atlanta.
He has become a regular on national television. Reed was scheduled tonight to be on a CNN roundtable with White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett and New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu.
“Anytime he needs to make contact with anybody in Washington, he gets through immediately,” former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young said. “He has a network of very good political relationships. Everything he does pays off for Atlanta.”
Not everything. Although the pension deal was ultimately supported by union workers, in exchange for their benefits down the road, the battle scarred many of them. In the short term, no matter how you look at it, they took pay cuts.
“In 2009, the unions’ dollars put the mayor in office,” Phyllis Hall, who works in the Department of Watershed Management, said at a recent pension hearing. “The same mayor that we put in office is the same mayor [getting ready] to take our pension and throw us in the street. He is no different from the little girl or the little boy on the playground bullying people.”
Now that a pension deal is in place — and with it being too early to assess the immediate and long-term impact of the plan — Reed said he is moving on to other projects.
Next on his plate, he said, would be to make Atlanta more attractive. That would mean speeding up completion of the Beltline and dealing with the city’s homeless and panhandling problems.
“So after two years of doing things that were very large and tough,” Reed said, “you are going to see us working on issues that impact quality of life and how people feel about Atlanta more.”
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