Holding Atlanta City Government Accountable

In anticipation of the numerous depositions alone that will be required as a result of the lawsuit Tom Coffin intends to file against the City of Atlanta, Coffin is hoping to establish a legal offense committee to help with his legal expenses. He would like to structure the committee in a way that would allow continued and broadened scrutiny of practices in the Arborist Division as well as be expandable to include other city departments and other issues of accountability, transparency, efficiency, etc. People with experience in fundraising and/or hosting benefits to raise money are particularly needed for his effort, even if all you can do is offer advice. However, those with no experience are needed as well, so please don't hesitate to get involved. (Getting the word out is the most important thing you can do.) If you would like to volunteer for this effort or want more information, please contact Tom Coffin or me directly, that is, if you know how. I'm not posting our persona...

I'm not sure that City Council has even begun their audit, but Tom Coffin already has all the evidence he needs just by the charts below . The City's attempt to portray Coffin as an overbearing but ineffective employee because he didn't use kinder, gentler methods of enforcing the Tree Ordinance is belied by the data Coffin recently received via Open Records. Yesterday, in an email to his supporters, Tom stated that: I will soon be filing suit against the City under the State "Whistleblower" statute (O.C.G.A. 45-1-4 (2008). Up until last year, the state's whistleblower law didn't even apply to city and county employees, but due to a recently passed bill by State Representative Rich Golick of Smyrna, Coffin can now file suit under this stature.

By Tom Coffin, Ph.D. Many people protested my July 29 firing at the first meeting of the City Council in August. There were also a few detractors, among them my former colleague and subordinate, Janell Bazile. Rank-and-file employees of the Bureau of Buildings are prohibited from speaking in public without the consent of management. Ms. Bazile was speaking for Arboricultural Manager Ainsley Caldwell, Bureau of Buildings Director Ibrahim Maslamani, Department of Planning Commissioner Steven Cover, and perhaps even Chief Operating Officer Greg Giornelli. Ms. Bazile assured the council that my published evidence of “near total abdication of enforcement of the tree protection ordinance” was inaccurate. She argued that there were other important enforcement measures short of citations that can be used under the ordinance. She implied, without evidence, that such activities were the actual mainstay of all the field arborists but me. This collaboration theory was accepted whole in the post-fi...

From the 10/20/08 Fulton County Taxpayers Foundation E-letter: Dear Members and Supporters, On October 29th, the same day that we planned our next luncheon, City Council will be meeting at 1:00 to discuss, among other items, the $850,000 expenditure for a redundant turnaround plan. We feel this meeting is so important that we have canceled the luncheon so we may attend this meeting. In addition, we will be submitting a proposal calling for a full audit of the City, as we are concerned that many more inconsistencies exist, including the under funded Pension Funds. We urge you to attend this meeting! If you can not attend, please email City Council, urging them to take action on a full city audit as well as rethinking a $850,000 expenditure we can not afford! Sincerely, Barbara Payne Executive Director

Updated October 20, 2008: Please note, this luncheon has been cancelled . From the 10/16/08 Fulton County Taxpayers Foundation E-Letter: Dear Members and Supporters, The City of Atlanta needs a front overhaul! One way to demand accountability from all City employees is to implement performance metrics! While Georgia is a Right To Work state, this should not mean that City employees escape the need for reviews and being held to a higher standard of job performance! Tickets are on sale for our October luncheon with Tom Coffin, who will be discussing the need for performance metrics and telling his story of his experience as a City employee. Unlike our last luncheon, we will NOT be allowing walk-up, so get your tickets early! Sincerely, John S. Sherman, President Barbara Payne, Executive Director Click here to reserve your ticket(s).

Attachment to a broadcast email from Tom Coffin: Citation Abuse In his September 29, 2008 letter justifying my firing as Senior Arborist for the City of Atlanta, HR Investigator Al Elder castigates me for supposed overuse of citations to enforce the Tree Protection Ordinance. He states that “Your supervisor and subordinates considered this approach extreme and elected to work with citizens in a more collaborative/non-confrontational manner.” He does not explain how these measures, which he identifies as “stop work orders, imposition of tree protection fencing, posting of corrective notices, prescriptions for silvicultural treatments, [and] requirements for 5-year survivability reports,” apply to trees removed or destroyed without a permit. He is perhaps correct, however, as the following chart may indicate. The data is official, provided me as part of an Open Records request: Another month has gone by since my dismissal on July 29. Quite miraculously all illegal tree removal and destru...

From The Buckhead Reporter... "We find it curious that our neighbor, who works for the government, could just make a few calls and have the decisions overturned — especially since he has had many trees removed in the past two years that were perfectly healthy." -- says Jim Kercher, Atlanta resident, who was served an arrest citation for failing to remove a perfectly healthy tree after Ainsley Caldwell, head of the city's Arborist Division, changed the inspection report of arborist Stanley Domengeaux to approve a previously determined "healthy" tree as "healthy but hazardous". So, is this the kind of "team environment" that Tom Coffin was fired for not upholding? I can't help but to wonder if when Mr. Coffin "failed to satisfactorily respond to the constructive criticism of supervisors", as Alfred Elder accused him of doing in his September 29 letter , was it because Coffin refused to let Caldwell change his reports? Here is an ...

From: Linda Trower Date: Thu, 2 Oct 2008 19:13:36 Dear Mayor Franklin -- your HR investigator committed to and then reneged on investigating the Cover, Maslamani, Borrero "plan" and interviewing Luz Borrero. At that point the investigation became a mayoral controlled sham. Tom Coffin was promoted to a nonclassified position where he could be and was fired without cause or recourse. That was the "plan," the end result being the weakening of the Tree Ordinance and a rejoicing by developers. Hopefully, Atlanta's next Mayor will be "green" and the Council's investigation and the Coffin lawsuit will get Tom rehired. Atlanta's status as a "green" city does not come from roof top gardens and city employees not using styrofoam cups, it comes from Atlanta's preservation of its precious tree canopy. I only hope that canopy can survive until the next Mayor is elected and the Tree Ordinance is once again enforced. Linda Trower, Concerned Ci...

Email response from Mayor Franklin in response to Shel Schlegman's October 2 email claiming that "Mayor (Franklin) and her cronies are just doing business as usual, padding their pockets." From: "Franklin, Shirley" SFranklin@AtlantaGa.Gov Date: Thu, 2 Oct 2008 07:04:32 Sheldon, The revew was independently and professionally conducted. While you might disagree with the conclusions you should acknowledge this. Additionally you have no evidence to lead you to the conclusion that I have "cronies" or that I, the Council or the city's staff have acted impromperly. In fact when it comes to the investment in sustainability and the environment whether parks, trees, air or water there has been no more committed admiinistration or Mayor in decades. Your allegations are unfounded. It is is one thing to disagree and another to lie. S Franklin

From the October 2008 newsletter of the Fulton County Taxpayers Foundation: Atlanta’s Questionable HR Policies: A Need for Enforceable Performance Metrics By Tom Coffin, fired Sr. Arborist for the City of Atlanta Background On July 29, I was summoned to a noon meeting with Ibrahim Maslamani, Director of the Bureau of Buildings in the City of Atlanta. This was the first meeting we had had since Mr. Maslamani promoted me in October 2007 to a newly-created position of Senior Arborist in charge of field operations in the Arborist Division. It was also our last meeting. Without warning, without explanation, without cause, without a shred of due process, Mr. Maslamani fired me. News travels fast in the internet age. Within hours phone calls and email messages of concern, despair and outrage were piling up in the offices of the Mayor and City Council. Within a day Channels 2 and 11 presented on-air interviews with me and others. The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Creative Loafing, the Buck...

From: sheldon schlegman Sent: Thursday, October 02, 2008 6:26 AM To: tom wheatley; editor@reporternewspapers.net; Alan Judd; diana davis Subject: City follows greenbacks. loses trees It’s business as usual at City Hall. Developers 1 - Citizens 0. It looks like the development community has won another battle for the almighty dollar. As you notice more trees going down in your neighborhood, DON’T BE SURPRISED. The Mayor and her cronies are just doing business as usual, padding their pockets. Remember we have a CITY election coming up.Let’s all find a Mayor and Council who will care about our city and the environment we live in. Shel Schlegman Atlanta

A document sent by broadcast email earlier today: Cover’s Parting Shot? By Tom Coffin On September 29, after a five-week “investigation” and a three-week “executive review,” the Human Resources department upheld my firing as Sr. Arborist for the City of Atlanta. The decision itself is not a surprise. It was telegraphed weeks ago in an utterly inappropriate and prejudicial letter to the City Council by COO Gregory Giornelli. (A complete set of documents on my firing, including Mr. Giornelli’s letter, can be found at http://holdingcitygovernmentaccountable.blogspot.com/ .) The attached investigative report (Moderator's note: click here to get to the attached letter) by Alfred Elder, however, is disingenuous to the point of dishonesty. Rather than conducting an independent investigation and writing a comprehensive and nuanced report, Elder employs one-sided evidence and known inaccuracies to justify a pre-ordained conclusion. This practice is usually called a “rubber stamp.” As...

Sorry I didn't post this article earlier, but it was only brought to my attention today. I'm impressed that the AJC got this story out more quickly than it did the one on Steve Cover's unexpected resignation . From the Atlanta Journal Constitution... Atlanta Goes Ahead with Firing of Arborist Coffin says other city employees didn’t follow tree ordinance By ERIC STIRGUS The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Tuesday, September 30, 2008 Atlanta officials said Tuesday they were justified in firing a senior arborist in July, despite his claims that other city arborists were lax in following the city’s tree ordinance. City human resources officials – upon the request of Mayor Shirley Franklin – conducted an inquiry into Tom Coffin’s firing after receiving scores of telephone calls and e-mails from some tree preservationists, residents and City Hall critics who questioned why he was let go. On Monday, the city’s human resources director wrote a letter to Coffin that said he was fired b...

Below is a letter that I was just forwarded via email: it's from Alfred Elder, Human Resources Director of the City of Atlanta. Before anyone dashes off a seething reply to Mr. Elder's letter -- which at first seems to scold Tom Coffin for a curmudgeonly management style -- take a look at what his letter really says. Elder's letter admits that Mr. Coffin first started criticizing the city arborists' lack of enforcement practices on November 8, 2007, almost a year ago. He states that "the statistics you presented were fairly accurate and support the need for changes in the division's distribution of work." But if the enforcement inequity Coffin cited was simply a matter of needing to change work distribution, why was the work not redistributed so that Coffin would have been unable to run the report he did in July 2008 ? Elder also shows us what happens to a city employee who won't back down from doing the right thing. Even though Elder acknowledges tha...