El and Mitchell both accuse Reed of political bullying - UPDATE
Politics is a rough game, but sometimes it's possible to be too cynical about its players.
- http://clatl.com/atlanta/ImageArchives?by=1223504
- Khaatim S. El
You may have heard that Atlanta School Board Chairman Khaatim S. El posted over the weekend what amounts to an open letter to the public in which he criticizes a certain mayor for bullying him into stepping down from the chairman's seat.
Here's how the letter begins:
Despite good work and a lot of courage, my time as chairman of the School Board has been mired by a very public, and much more nefarious behind the scenes, game of tug-of-war with Atlanta's Mayor Kasim Reed.
As it happens, El is the second local elected official within a week to decry Reed's hard-ball approach. In fact, at the end of his letter, El cites a Fresh Loaf posting from a couple days before in which I described the dust-up between Reed and City Council President Ceasar Mitchell over pension reform.
This past Friday, the day after I'd put up my post, I saw Mitchell at the Council retreat. He said I'd unfairly impugned his motives behind his trying to persuade the Council to take as much time as necessary to address pension reform. Also, he told me, my coverage had blown the situation out of proportion — his goal wasn't to pick a fight with Reed, he said, but simply to ensure the Council didn't rush into a hasty decision. Describing the pension debate as a battle between the city's top two elected officials might get readers' attention, he said, but it wasn't an accurate portrayal of the process.
(UPDATE: As noted in one of the comments below, El and Mitchell aren't the only officials publicly criticizing Reed. In fact, Councilwoman Felicia Moore sent out an e-mail yesterday with links to a video of her own comments from the June 6 Council meeting, as well as those of her colleagues Natalyn Archibong and Michael Bond, all of whom contend that the mayor is being overly pushy. Keep in mind, however, that all of these folks were left out of the discussions that took place between the mayor's office and other Council members that led to the introduction of Yolanda Adrean's Reed-approved compromise pension proposal.)