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Restoring
faith
However, before Franklin could take any part of her wish list to
Atlanta’s public, she had to restore face to and faith in the mayor’s
office. The administration of the previous mayor, Bill Campbell, came
under investigation for corruption, and he was convicted on tax evasion
charges. Franklin started cleaning house with a new ethics reform
program that set standards for conduct and transparency in government.
She set out to show she was running a trustworthy operation, opening an
ethics hotline for the public and employees to anonymously report
illegal activity of any city worker.
Franklin knew she needed public backing to go forward with big-ticket
items like overhaul of the water system. In 2004, when she convinced
the General Assembly to allow Atlanta to place a municipal option sales
tax before voters, they overwhelmingly passed the measure to help pay
for repair of the antiquated water and sewer system.
Other major accomplishments of her administration have needed public
backing. For example, a sustainability initiative has led to Atlanta
becoming one of the cities with the highest percentage of
LEED-certified green buildings in the United States. Franklin also is
administering a $150 million Quality of Life Bond Program that has
undertaken almost 1,200 projects to add sidewalks, beautify roads,
enhance pedestrian and vehicle safety, and reconstruct and resurface
damaged streets and bridges. Most recently, she has led community and
city efforts to successfully acquire Martin Luther King Jr.’s personal
papers for Morehouse College, King’s alma mater.
And as much as anything, Franklin is proud of the completion of a fifth
runway of Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. The airport is a
good model for investment from both government and business. It was
upgraded in 1980 to accommodate 55 million
passengers a year, at a time when Atlanta was a mid-sized, regional
city. With continued investment, today it has grown to the undisputed
busiest airport in the world, serving 89 million passengers a year, and
it recently won accolades as the world’s most efficient airport from
the Air Transport Research Society, for the third year in a row.
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