Investigation Into Mayor Reed’s Bonuses, Prizes Concludes
December 2017 bonuses and holiday party prizes former Mayor Kasim Reed gave to city employees totaled more than $500,000.
Al Such / WABE
The City of Atlanta has released its investigation of the bonuses and holiday party prizes former Mayor Kasim Reed gave to city employees.
The December 2017 payments totaled more than $500,000 and prompted City Council to question their legality, as they were not approved by Council. Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms commissioned the investigation in April.
Whether the bonuses and prizes violated city code is unclear, according to the report by outside lawyers Michael Coleman and Leslie Suson. The report said “the City Code is extremely muddled with respect to compensation authority, with several provisions scattered throughout the Code.”
However, the payments did reportedly violate the state constitution. Its gratuities clause prohibits municipalities from giving gifts or extra money to public employees for work already completed. That’s opposed to a bonus that would guarantee some sort of future benefit to the municipality.
According to the report, city workers and Mayor Reed had a “good-faith belief” the payments were legal, but that belief was “misplaced.” Reed did reportedly ask other staff multiple times whether they were legal, but apparently, no one asked the Law Department for confirmation.
Coleman and Suson interviewed many top city officials, including Reed for the report. One inconsistency lay in the origin of the idea to award end-of-year bonuses to Reed’s top cabinet officials. Reed said former CFO Jim Beard, his Chief of Staff Candace Byrd and former Human Resources Commissioner Yvonne Yancy presented the idea to him. Beard and Byrd said they did not remember who presented it originally, and Yancy said it was Reed’s idea. Beard, Byrd and Yancy all received $15,000 bonuses.
Reed said the holiday party prizes for his executive office were his idea. Yancy said similar prizes given at her department’s holiday party were her idea.
The report doesn’t recommend trying to get the money back, since, it says, it would be difficult to separate these bonuses from all others paid by the city over the years that may also be in violation of the gratuities clause.
Coleman and Suson recommended that legislation be adopted to straighten out the inconsistencies in the code related to compensation and bonuses. They recommended any future holiday party prizes in a Council-approved budget and suggested better training for city officials about how the gratuities clause impacts their work.
In a statement, Mayor Bottoms said she looks forward “to discussing with members of the City Council additional steps that we can take to make sure that any future bonus payments are fully compliant with all provisions of the law.”
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