To the Editor:
He never finished high school nor graduated from college, and yet he left a profound influence on the growth and financial stability of the city and surrounding area of Atlanta, Georgia. Serving as its mayor for six terms, starting in 1936, he persuaded the Georgia General Assembly to establish a model budget system.
If only, we could have mandated that each candidate who ran for political office at the city, state, or federal level read what he did to achieve fiscal integrity, we would not be in the financial abyss and recession we are in today. Some equate this period to a depression, which only time will tell. Hopefully not.
Maybe we should be asking each candidate who runs for public office whether he would be willing to do or support what this man did and if not, why not? What he did through legislation was profound, especially when you look back to the 1930s, which, in some respects, is similar to today. Few politicians know of this man, and fewer still have ever read what he did while serving as mayor of Atlanta, Georgia during the height of the depression and into the 1940s.
This new system of fiscal responsibility, new for politicians that is, would not allow the city’s budget to exceed 99 percent of the previous year’s receipts. It would be hard to find one city that does that today.
The year was 1936. Because the City Council did not allocate more than 95 percent of those receipts from the previous year, the city had a cash carryover each year. In his first two years, after taking office, the City of Atlanta gradually began to recover from the depression and went on to become one of the more progressive and sought after cities to live and work in.
A man of humble origins who had more to offer than many of us, myself included, who are college educated but lack wisdom and common sense. His name is William B. Hartsfield.
If you go online, you will see many listings of homes selling for $330,000 in Georgia, with an average property tax of $3,400, while we here in Bayonne are struggling to pay property taxes that are 200 to 400 percent more. As a result, not too many families can retire in the city they grew up in and loved as a child. Is that a legacy any politician should be proud of?
His name should be enshrined over every City Council Chamber, every school board meeting room, every mayor’s office, every state capitol and government budget office, and the halls of Congress. What a different country we now would be if we did what he did. Collectively we can make a difference by electing men and women of the same character as William B. Hartsfield.
THOMAS J. BRAGEN