By Ty Tagami
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Copyright 2006 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Atlanta firefighters won’t get a raise if Mayor Shirley Franklin has anything to say about it.
She derailed an attempt by the City Council to give firefighters a 3.5 percent pay increase, delivering her veto Monday.
The move angered firefighters, whose union representative accused Franklin of misrepresenting the facts.
Franklin said in her veto letter that the raise would have boosted firefighters to 98 percent of “market pay.” But Jim Daws, president of the Atlanta Professional Firefighters, said 80 percent was more like it.
Relative pay for police officers and firefighters has been an annual point of contention between the mayor and the council. The Police Department suffers from relatively high turnover, so Franklin consistently has offered police officers larger raises at budget time than other employees. But firefighters routinely demand “parity,” and each year they’ve found council members to support their cause.
Although officials adopted the 2006-07 budget earlier this year, this recent fight was precipitated by surplus revenue.
The budget was based on conservative revenue estimates, and actual revenue exceeded projections by $16 million. The mayor added the new funds to the budget, bringing the total to $593 million. She spent most of the new money on pension fund payments, but set aside $3.8 million to give police officers a 3.5 percent raise.
The council authorized those new expenditures last week, but added a requirement: In a 9-6 vote, the council told Franklin to give firefighters the same 3.5 percent raise as police, and directed her to harvest the necessary $1.9 million from other departments by cutting their budgets.
The mayor said in her veto letter, which was dated Saturday, that she cannot identify places to cut the budget. She added: “This proposed pay increase would place sworn firefighters considerably ahead of the pace to improve pay for sworn police officers. I do not consider such a decision to be prudent or wise.”
Daws said Franklin’s calculations do not consider that firefighters work longer hours than police. He said he and his colleagues will battle on, lobbying the council for one more vote.
The council could overrule the mayor when it meets July 5, but it takes 10 votes to override a veto.