Atlanta regularly lands at the top of some rankings – in the Top 25 for healthiest cities, Top 20 for single people and Top 10 for summer vacations, but a popular financial site has given the city's government the dubious distinction of being near the bottom of its "2017's Best- & Worst-Run Cities in America."
»RELATED: Atlanta named one of the 'most fun' cities in America
WalletHub, a finance website that produces regular rankings of cities and states in a wide variety of categories, issued a ranking Monday that placed Atlanta No. 137 among the 150 largest cities in America based on a formula that it claims represents “operating efficiency.”
The City of Atlanta dismissed the ranking as being irrelevant.
“Over the course of Mayor Kasim Reed’s tenure, the City of Atlanta has successfully and unanimously passed public-pension reform; increased its credit rating to Double A plus (AA+), the second-highest rating a city can receive; built its cash reserves from $7.4 million to $175 million; reduced homelessness by more than 50 percent across key metrics; and placed the city on its strongest financial footing in more than 40 years,” a spokesperson told The Atlanta Journal Constitution by email.
“Ironically, the credit report and monitoring website [Wallethub] ranked Atlanta in their top ten of ‘Best Large Cities to Live in’ just last year.”
How do you calculate something like operating efficiency for a city government? WalletHub produced its ranking by rating the cities on six broad quality of life measures: financial stability, education, health, safety, economy, and infrastructure and pollution. The quality of city services score was then divided by each city’s total budget per capita to produce the ranking.
How did Atlanta end up at the bottom?
Its total budget per capita was No. 138 in the ranking. Its performance in some key metrics kept it in the bottom third. Its water quality score put Atlanta at No. 145, while for air pollution it was No. 132. Average commute time (No. 118) and traffic congestion (No. 117) were also sore spots for Atlanta, though slightly offset by a very high score (No. 24) on “Transit Access Shed,” which is defined as the total area easily accessible from any point via public transportation.
»RELATED: Atlanta named one of the best summer vacation spots for 2017
Similarly, high rankings in income growth (No. 21) and growth in the number of businesses (No. 49) were offset by low economic mobility (No. 141) and share of population living below the poverty line (No. 112). Atlanta’s best performing metric was recreation friendliness, where it was No. 10 out the 150 cities.
While the metrics used seem to represent a measure of the quality of life in cities, does simply comparing them to the per capita spending of each city create a real comparison of how well run each city is?
WalletHub’s own experts pointed out some shortcomings in this formula.
“One must distinguish outcomes from local government performance,” Jason Sorens, program director of the political economy project at Dartmouth College, said according to WalletHub’s report. “Employment, income growth and crime rates are not under the direct control of local governments.”
Sorens suggested a heavier focus on infrastructure and school spending per high school graduate; however, education spending and control is something that varies widely from city to city.
While some city governments, such as New York, do exercise direct control over public schools, many, including Atlanta, have school districts that are run by independently elected boards with no city oversight.
The question of how much direct control the city government has over the metrics is applicable in almost all six of the indicators in the ranking, except for financial stability.
For example, in the infrastructure and pollution indicator, metrics such as quality of roads, transit access shed, walk score, bike score, transit score and recreation friendliness cover areas that are traditionally within the purview of city government.
»RELATED: Atlanta named one of the best cities for a staycation
However, metrics such as air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions are more typically state and federal issues, with varying amounts of local control.
There are also several metrics that could be considered city government problems, but areas where they have significantly less control. Atlanta scored particularly low for average commute time and traffic congestion. While Atlanta has control over transportation planning within its boundaries, the development plans and decisions by the numerous other city and county governments that surround the city core have as much or more of an impact on the commute within the city – as do the design and maintenance of the interstate highways that crisscross the city.
Also striking in the results is the company that Atlanta has in the bottom rung.
The bottom 20 on the ranking reads like a list of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas; the top 20 is made up of noticeable lower population cities.
So is Atlanta really one of the “worst-run cities” in the country? According to WalletHub’s analysts, yes.
Of course, the site's analysts also released a report last month that named Olathe, Kansas, as one of the top 20 beach towns in the United States – so it's always worth looking at how they calculate their rankings.
About the Author
