Macon City Councilman Rick Hutto delivered several shots at Mayor Robert Reichert earlier this week because of an agenda item that was up for referral to the Ordinances and Resolutions Committee — the same day the City Council approved changes to the city’s health care plan.
Reichert had introduced an ordinance to give a cost-of-living raise to the elected city officials — the mayor and City Council — that would have taken effect only after next year’s elections.
According to city bylaws, the ordinances must be amended the year before the city elections and any raise wouldn’t go into effect until after the election. So in theory, current elected officials would be approving the raises of their replacements should they not run again or get defeated at the polls.
The item was defeated in the committee meeting, but Hutto attacked Reichert during the full council meeting Tuesday night, saying it was “cynical” of the mayor to introduce the legislation during the same time that the changes to the city’s health plan were up for a vote. Hutto repeated the charge on Wednesday’s edition of “The FOX Files.”
Reichert spokesman Andrew Blascovich said later that even had the pay changes been approved, they wouldn’t go into effect until 2013, when all of the elected officials would have received a 3 percent raise that year and the following year.
Hutto and other council members also criticized Reichert for seemingly adding salary to the office of the mayor by reclassifying an expense allowance of $3,000 to add it to his general salary. The mayor’s office has had the allowance budgeted going back at least to former Mayor Jim Marshall’s administration.
Some council members remarked that Reichert was trying to work around the rules to give himself a raise.
However, according to a memo sent from City Attorney Pope Langstaff to Council President Pro Tem James Timley, the change in the allowance was being proposed because of changes to the IRS tax code, meaning that Reichert was having to pay income tax on that money.
“For this reason, we made the decision a few years ago to report the expense allowance as part of the mayor’s salary,” Langstaff wrote. “This reporting made it appear that there was an increase in Mayor Reichert’s salary, but ... he is making exactly what Mayor (C. Jack) Ellis made. There has in fact been no increase.”
Warner Robins on Macon council’s mind
A couple of members of Macon’s City Council noted on different occasions the attention Warner Robins was receiving (Little League softball, mascot protests, police chief suspensions.)
Councilman Tom Ellington visited Australia last week and brought back the Aug. 11 edition of the daily newspaper The Melbourne Age. On the front page, in a section called “Odd Spot,” the newspaper noted the arrest of the Rev. Donald Crosby after protesting the “Demons” nickname of Warner Robins High School. The paper noted it because Melbourne’s Australian Rules Football club also is nicknamed the “Demons.”
Meanwhile, Councilman Erick Erickson noted during Tuesday’s council meeting that the Crosby case and the Warner Robins City Council decision to overrule Mayor Chuck Shaheen over the suspension of Police Chief Brett Evans had kept Macon politics off the front page of The Telegraph.
Noting the controversial nature of Tuesday’s vote over Macon city workers’ health care benefits, Erickson said, “I fear that will no longer be the case after tonight.”
Diaper jobs, diaper jokes
Local and state officials were understandably in a celebratory mood at Friday’s ceremony announcing First Quality’s $35 million expansion in Macon — $200 million if you count new equipment.
So the one-liners were flying, and the diaper manufacturer’s product was the ... uh ... butt of the jokes.
Gov. Sonny Perdue quipped that he and his wife, Mary, and specifically their 11 grandchildren, were helping the company on the “demand side.”
“If they add an adult line, I’ll probably be a customer soon,” Perdue said, drawing a roar from the crowd at Middle Georgia Regional Airport.
“Strike that from the record,” he said, waiting for the laughter to die down. “You can tell I’m not up for re-election.”
Macon-Bibb County Industrial Authority Chairman Cliffard Whitby, the father of 6-month-old twin girls, displayed two diapers he had collected on a company tour.
“Where’s my wife?” he asked, scanning the crowd. “I got one for both babies.”
Mayor Robert Reichert described touring the company’s new high-tech plant in Pennsylvania.
“If you’ve never seen baby diapers being made at the rate of 650 a minute, it’s an incredible thing to see.”
He suggested a new company motto to Bob Schiek, First Quality’s director of manufacturing as he held up a diaper: “We’ve got your back.”
Schiek said he would pass the mayor’s idea on to the company’s marketing department.
Not so fast ...
The State Ethics Commission dismissed a violation against former mayoral candidate Chuck Chalk on Tuesday, but many more questions remain about the mysterious donation he got from deceased Mayor Donald Walker’s campaign account.
The main one is obvious: If none of the documents to be filed on Walker’s campaign account have been filed, how is it even known where the money Chalk received came from?
Efforts to reach attorney Larry Walker, who has been handling communication for the campaign, were unsuccessful Friday.
Officials have been slow to force the hand of handlers of Donald Walker’s coffers. The amount of money remaining in the account is unknown, and who’s taken charge of it is even more of a mystery.
As his surviving spouse, wife Patricia should be handling the funds, but only if a treasurer isn’t documented on the account.
Walker didn’t make any filings during his 2009 re-election campaign.
Writers Phillip Ramati, Marlon A. Walker and Rodney Manley contributed to this report.
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