Mayor's veto upsets firefighters

WXIA TV

November 23, 2004

Reported by: Dennis O'Hayer

Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin's veto of a 4-percent pay raise for firefighters and other city workers cut short a public battle for pay parity between the firefighters and the city's police officers.

The firefighters' union held a week of public demonstrations and protests that called for city council members to approve a bigger raise than the 1 percent promised by the mayor. They had cause to celebrate last week when city council members approved an amendment to the budget that increased that pay raise to 4 percent.

The celebrating came to an abrupt stop Tuesday when the mayor announced that she did not have the money in the budget to give the firefighters the raise they wanted.

During a news conference, Mayor Franklin displayed budget books from the past four years to boast that she's taken the city from $82 million in the red to $70 million in the black. The mayor said she accomplished that by only spending money the city has. She argued that the bigger raise for police officers is needed to keep them on the force.

"Firefighters' turnover is under 1 percent. Police officers' turnover, because of the competition for them, trained, post-certified officers, sometimes is as high as 10 percent. We have to do something about retention," said Franklin.

Angry firefighters said the mayor won their election campaign endorsement by promising parity with police officers.

"We spent a lot of our good will that we have earned through hard work, long hours, and great risk to this community because Ms. Franklin said that she supported parity between police and fire," said Jim Daws of Atlanta Professional Firefighters. "We're dismayed that she's turned her back on us and walked away from those commitments."

“People feel like they have been consigned to second-class public safety status and a lot of people are searching their hearts as to why they made a choice to work for the Atlanta Fire Department to begin with,” Daws added.

The mayor contends that to achieve pay parity, she would have to raise property taxes or raise sewer rates.

Firefighters said they hope the city council will override the veto. To do that, the measure would have to pass by 10 votes. The amendment that increased their pay raise only passed by eight votes. The Atlanta city council has until February to finalize the budget.

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