Lonely at the top

Give her full credit for due diligence. If the city’s incoming batch of top administrators is filled with duds, it won’t be because Mayor Shirley Franklin rushed to install them.

Franklin initially wanted to name her police chief, chief operating officer, chief financial officer and city attorney by the end of March. Well, we’re halfway through June, and thus far, only the police chief has been named.

That should change this week, says spokeswoman Sandra Walker, when the new city attorney will be announced.

Georgia Bureau of Investigation reports on the candidates for the city’s other major cabinet posts are still coming in, and Franklin is reviewing them, Walker says. It seems like those reports have been one of the reasons that the searches are so far behind schedule. When asked during the hunt for a new chief if he would have done anything differently, Sam Pettway, whose firm Spencer Stuart Executive Research found the top cop in former New Orleans Chief Richard J. Pennington, said he would have started the GBI investigations earlier in the process.

As for a new planning commissioner to replace the outgoing Michael Dobbins, the mayor’s spokeswoman says a group has just signed on to begin the search, and Franklin hopes to have it completed by the end of July. Maybe the GBI should release its bloodhounds now.??