Atlanta Housing Authority CEO Renee Glover resigns

• Atlanta Housing Authority
• Renee Glover

After a long battle over her future at the Atlanta Housing Authority, Renee Glover has resigned, effective immediately. The former corporate finance attorney, who’s led the authority since 1994, oversaw the both celebrated and controversial demolition of nearly all the city’s public housing projects and their subsequent redevelopment into mixed-income housing.

So says AHA Spokesman Rick White in an emailed release:

Today, the Board of Commissioners of the Atlanta Housing Authority has accepted Renee Glover’s resignation. Ms. Glover has done an outstanding job over the past 19 years and the entire Board wishes her well in her future endeavors.

Effective September 3, 2013, Ms. Glover will resign as President and CEO of the Atlanta Housing Authority and its affiliates. Ms. Glover, a 19-year veteran of AHA, has agreed to be available to assist AHA during a 90-day transition period which will end November 30, 2013.

The Board of Commissioners will immediately begin a national search for Ms. Glover’s replacement and Joy Fitzgerald, AHA’s Chief Real Estate Officer, will assume the position of Interim CEO.

What’s odd about today’s news is that Glover actually started negotiating her departure from AHA in October - of 2011. That month, after weeks of whispers about her imminent departure, the AHA announced in a statement that Mayor Kasim Reed and the board members he appointed to the authority’s board had “made it clear” that they wanted a change in leadership. Reed told CL shortly after that the AHA statement took him by surprise, both in timing and wording.

By some accounts, including Reed’s, the two never established a working relationship after he was sworn into office. Glover’s five-year, $1.5 million employment contract, which was approved in 2010 by a board that included members whose terms were ending, didn’t sit well with Reed. Last December, when negotiations between AHA and Glover came to a standstill, Reed said that he would be comfortable if she served the remainder of her contract and would respect the board’s decisions. (Asked for comment today, Reed said via a spokeswoman: “I thank Ms. Glover for her many years of service to the City of Atlanta and the Atlanta Housing Authority and wish her well in her future endeavors.”)

Since that October 2011 announcement, we’ve heard several times that the board was ready to approve a severance agreement. But come time for the authority’s board to meet and vote, the matter was delayed. Or the board failed to have a quorum.

So what happened? Let’s try to find out, shall we?