Shirley Franklin - Political Life

Political Life

Franklin served as the Commissioner of Cultural Affairs under Mayor Maynard Jackson. Subsequently, she was named Chief Administrative Officer and City Manager under Mayor Andrew Young.

Her 2001 run for mayor was her first run for public office. She won, succeeding Mayor Bill Campbell after winning 50 percent of the vote, defeating several candidates including Democrat Rob Pitts (33 percent). Facing a massive and unexpected budget deficit, Franklin slashed the number of government employees and increased taxes to balance the budget as quickly as possible.

Franklin made repairing the Atlanta sewer system a main focus of her office. Prior to Franklin's term, Atlanta's combined sewer system violated the federal Clean Water Act and burdened the city government with fines from the Environmental Protection Agency. In 2002, Franklin announced an initiative called "Clean Water Atlanta" to address the problem and begin improving the city's sewer system.

She has been lauded for efforts to make the City of Atlanta "green." Under Franklin's leadership Atlanta has gone from having one of the lowest percentages of LEED certified buildings to one of the highest.

In 2005, TIME Magazine named Franklin of the five best big-city American mayors. In October of that same year, she was included in the U.S. News & World Report "Best Leaders of 2005" issue.

With solid popular support and strong backing from the business sector, Franklin was reelected Atlanta Mayor in 2005, garnering more than 90 percent of the vote. Her popularity has led to increased speculation that she may well be a viable contender for a future Georgia governor's race.

In February 2006, The White House Project named Shirley Franklin one of its "8 in '08", a group of eight female politicians who could possibly run and/or be elected president in 2008. She was the only person the list to not be a governor, senator or presidential cabinet member, and one of two African-American women on the list; the other was United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

In 2006, Shirley Franklin led the effort to have the papers of Dr. Martin Luther King given to his alma mater, Morehouse College, instead of being sold at auction:

On September 5, 2006, Mayor Franklin, along with a group of representatives from the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, went on a business trip to China to help Delta Air Lines win a direct route to one of the world's fastest-growing economies and lobby officials to open a Chinese consulate in Atlanta.

Franklin is a member of the Mayors Against Illegal Guns Coalition, an organization formed in 2006 and co-chaired by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and Boston mayor Thomas Menino. She was 2007/08 President of the National Conference of Democratic Mayors.

In 2008, facing a major deficit, Mayor Franklin asked the Atlanta City Council to approve a property tax increase, to avoid public safety cuts. The Atlanta City Council unanimously shot down the measure, which would have caused the average city homeowner to pay an estimated extra $30 in property taxes under Franklin’s plan. As Mayor Franklin warned, without the tax increase, layoffs and pay cuts of Atlanta public safety officials would be imminent.

According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, in December 2008 Franklin announced that 222 city workers would lose their jobs to help fill a projected $50 million to $60 million budget shortfall. Most remaining city workers, including firefighters, will work fewer hours and suffer a pay cut as part of the budget cuts.

Mayor Shirley Franklin has said that the deficits in the city of Atlanta are not because of excess city spending. In fact, according to the Atlanta Business Chronicle city spending actually ran slightly below budgeted amounts through the first quarter of the fiscal year that began in July. According to Mayor Shirley Franklin, city tax collections are down by more than 12 percent because of the economic downturn. However, basic accounting mistakes in the city budget also played a significant role in the budget crisis. An independent audit of the 2002 budget by Ernst & Young reported that Atlanta had some of the worst bookkeeping practices the auditors had ever seen and that many finance department employees were clearly unqualified for their jobs.

Mayor Shirley Franklin has also asked Congress for a "bail-out" of over $30 million for the city of Atlanta.

Franklin, Philadelphia's Michael Nutter and Phil Gordon of Phoenix lobbied Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in a joint letter asking for a share of the proposed $700 billion bailout.