Steve Suitts: Honoring Shirley Franklin, Atlanta’s “ethics mayor”

Last week, city officials and others celebrated Shirley Clarke Franklin’s more than 30 years of public service to Atlanta in ceremonies that renamed part of Central Avenue and the city’s new Westside Park in her honor. At dedication events, speakers remembered the remarkable leadership of Atlanta’s first woman mayor.

Beginning in 2002, Mayor Franklin created a “pothole posse” evidencing anew that city hall could quickly address residents’ everyday problems, and she earned the unglamorous title of “Sewer Mayor” by saving the city from continued, massive federal fines and a disastrous collapse of its decaying infrastructure. She also was remembered for making the city’s initial investments in the Beltline and for transforming an abandoned quarry, once worked by convict labor, into a vital water reservoir and spacious park for a fast-growing city’s future.

But another of Franklin’s important legacies for Atlanta was never mentioned. It should not be forgotten that she established ethics as a permanent, integral principle for how the city of Atlanta will be governed and operate in the new century.

Following the financial scandals during former mayor Bill Campbell’s administration, Franklin understood better than others that more than a promise of honesty was necessary to ensure that city hall would earn back and keep the trust of Atlanta residents.

“Ethics is a big deal,” Franklin proclaimed. “It is the only deal… We cannot accomplish anything, not economic development, not clean water or better sewers if we lose the public trust.”

Overcoming the opposition of many members of the then-City Council, Franklin pushed through the adoption of a strict code of ethics for all city employees from top to bottom, including herself. The new law provided for an independent ethics officer to enforce the code and build through monitoring, investigation and education a culture of ethics throughout the city government.

Franklin led by example, complying with the code’s restrictions that among other things prohibits city employees from receiving any gifts and gratuities that might appear or constitute a conflict of interest. Whenever in doubt, she followed the advice and direction of the city’s inaugural ethics officer and supported her findings and rulings as they fundamentally improved behaviors and expectations. As the late award-winning journalist Maynard Eaton wrote in the Atlanta Voice, Franklin’s ethics code was “virtually unheard of in Atlanta politics” going back even to the city’s founding in 1837.

By cementing in place and supporting a strict regime of ethics, independent of political control, Franklin did far more than build a system of compliance to prevent and uncover conflicts of interests and malfeasance. She established a new, enduring standard for how city hall should operate in the public interest every day and elevated city residents’ trust in their local government as well as their continuing expectation that it should and must always be transparent and honest.

This singular achievement will not be remembered through the naming of a street, park, or place, but it is a very big deal, perhaps the former mayor’s biggest deal, that will reward the entire city and those who govern it in the future so long as they remain faithful to the democratic covenant that Shirley Clarke Franklin established in law and practice as Atlanta’s “ethics mayor.”

Credit: Steve Suitts/contributed

Credit: Steve Suitts/contributed

Steve Suitts is an adjunct at Emory University’s Institute for Liberal Arts and formerly served as vice-president of the Southern Education Foundation and executive director of the Southern Regional Council.