The Atlanta Constitution from Atlanta, Georgia • 242

While Atlanta has grown BIMIWIHS GIB IB Wffl more liberal, conservative City Councilman Buddy Fowlkes has become increasingly powerful By Maxine A. Rock make peace with me, and we got along okay after that" Fowlkes turned on ex-Mayor Maynard Jackson when Jackson tried to force him into taking city money away from the. Bobby Jones Golf Course in favor of less-wealthy southside parks. Fowlkes refused. An eight-year feud started pitting Fowlkes' fiscal conservatism against Jackson's spend-for-the-poor philosophy of government.

Jackson thundered that because Fowlkes Was so tight with' a penny, it proved, "Buddy Fowlkes has a commitment to equal opportunity equal to that of a gnat" Even though Fowlkes didn't speak to Jackson after the remark, he found ways to get around him and kept a tight rein on the city budget Fowlkes says of Atlanta's new mayor, Andrew Young, "He talks things over with me, and we get along just fine." People who don't get along with Fowlkes find themselves in what Jim Maddox, councilman from District 11, calls "the hot seat" Maddox sits on Fowlkes' Public -Safety Committee, as the Public Safety and Legal Administration Committee is called. "I don't always agree with Buddy because he's pretty conservative," Maddox admits. ''But I have to respect him. He's prompt and thorough and you can see he does his homework. He never comes up with any- thing off the wall" That could be one reason why Marvin Arrington, City Council president, made Fowlkes chairman of the Public Safety Committee in January.

Arrington insists he did it "just to give everybody a chance at a different job." But City Hall insiders say Arrington was fed up with Public Safety Commissioner Lee Brown, and wanted a tough councilman to force Brown to address the city's crime problem. Fowlkes didn't waste any time. He immediately rescheduled committee meetings, to an evening time, to. make it easier for citizens to attend. Then he insisted Brown nt is exactly seven o'clock on a wet, wind-filled February night Douglas Lincoln Fowlkes yanks open the door to room 201 at Atlanta City Hall and marches in, bringing with him a -blast of chilly air that momentarily lifts the collar of his perfectly tailored raincoat and ruffles his straight blond hair.

"Hi, Buddy, hows it goin'J" chirps a young reporter. Fowlkes ignores the pretense, of familiarity with a brief, lipped smile. He slips off the raincoat as he walks and smoothes his hair with one thin hand. The room is noisy with the voices of councilmen, police officials, reporters, visitors and City Hall clerks. But when Fowlkes passes they look up, startled, and slip into their chairs.

By the time he reaches his spot at the head of the table and pounds once with his chairman's gavel, everyone is silent. Fowlkes glances at the big wall clock, nods at the clerk perched nervously at his side and lets the boom of his voice fill the room. "This is the Public Safety and Legal Administration Committee," he says. "We shall begin." Ever since D. "Buddy" Fowlkes got involved in city politics 20 years ago, he's kept the same exacting, no-nonsense style.

He was first elected to the Atlanta Board of Aldermen in 1962, when being powerful in the city usually meant being wealthy, white, male, middle-aged and part of the downtown business establishment. Fowlkes didn't quite fit the mold. He was only 33 the youngest man ever elected to the board and he says he shook things up the minute he took office. "The night I crime home after beating Shag Cates, my phone was ringing and it was a guy who wanted a whiskey license. In those days it was up to your alderman to grant or deny that license, he could bless or curse you at will.

It was terribly corrupt If you granted a new license everybody said you were on the take, and if you denied it the gossip went that the liquor dealers in hiaxin A. Rock it Atlanta-band fro lane writtr. your ward were paying you to keep out the competition. So I made up my mind that very night to end it, and I lobbied the churches and did studies, and pushed through a license review board. It was a whole new system, and it took whiskey out of politics.

"The next time I was up for election I didn't get any donations from the whiskey folks. But I got my way." Fowlkes usually does get his way. The Board of. Aldermen has evolved into the City Council, and the balding men who once held power have been replaced with blacks, women and young activists. But Fowlkes has endured through a new city charter, a revised system of local politics and the dispersal of power to numerous minority groups within Atlanta.

He says it's harder now to get everyone on the council to agree on important issues, and he's not happy about what he calls the "narrow perspective" of people who care more about their districts than about the city as a whole. Still, he adapts to the power shifts almost before they happen, keeping a firm hold on his reputation as one of the city's strongest and perhaps most successful local politicians. "If Buckhead was a city, Buddy would be mayor," says former Mayor Sam MisselL always worked well with him, partly everybody knows it doesn't pay to pick a fight with Buddy. The guy almost never accepts defeat His power comes from the way he does research, goes after the facts and keeps working on a problem until he convinces people to help him solve it his way. Other politicians come and go, but Buddy is just too tough to fade away." Massell isn't the only mayor who learned that lesson.

When Fowlkes first got elected as alderman, he says, he got annoyed with Mayor Ivan Allen for "treating me like a kid." "He wanted to pat me on the head like I was a little boy," says Fowlkes. "1 twisted his tail by sending some of his programs down the tube. He called and asked to "Othert come and go," says Sam Massell. "but Buddy is too tough to fade away'.