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FORD FOUNDATION DIRECTOR GEORGE MCCARTHY: As Luis pointed out at the beginning, we really
need to think very differently about how we're going to work in cities and metropolitan areas
going forward, and our next panel is going to explore how we actually do that: how we
take down some of those barriers, and what we're doing now to really re-imagine different
ways of working together to make metropolitan areas work well as equitable and prosperous
just cities.
So let me please introduce our panel. We'll bring them onto the stage in a minute. Let
me remember who they are.
First, we have the honorable John Hickenlooper, the Governor of Colorado, and the former Mayor
of Denver. MarySue Barrett from Chicago. Ben Hecht, Manuel Pastor, and our moderator, Andrea
Bernstein. Please, the next panel, come on up to the stage.
[APPLAUSE]
ANDREA BERNSTEIN: So hello everyone. This is the Not Just Cities portion of the Just
City day. [LAUGHTER]
This panel is breaking down the barriers, and I am really excited to be having this
conversation because I'm going to press everybody to be data-based, fact-based; to speak candidly;
to speak in plain language. I know that everybody here is an expert and everybody knows what
the -- maybe you learned about the BRT at the TRB, and maybe your DOT has created the
TOD. But we're going to try to speak up in language that everybody understands because
I certainly hope that this conversation will be one that will resonate far and wide, and
will be something that all kinds of people can talk about.
So I'm just going to jump right in. I think one of the things that we have here today
is some examples of success, of regions working together.
I'd like to talk about that. But first, I wanted to establish the sort of -- or ask
what did the data tell us about whether that is really a good thing. I mean you know sort
of obviously several decades ago there was a feeling in this country that it was better
for regions not to work together, and that was sort of the dominant ideology: that people
would move out to the suburbs, and those would be their own independent units, and that would
be a more effective way of social organization than everyone working together.
In fact, all kinds of social structures were created -- Colorado was one example -- where
in fact you couldn't work together regionally. There were lots of barriers thrown up for
that.
So let's start with Professor Manuel Pastor of the University of Southern California,
who has actually studied this issue, and you can start by giving us some examples of how
it is that areas that work well regionally do better than other areas.
MANUEL PASTOR: Well, you've asked us to speak clearly and simply, and the first person you
turn to is an economist; so that might be a mistake. [LAUGHTER]
BERNSTEIN: Oh well.
PASTOR: I want to both thank the Ford Foundation for bringing us together and then say one
thing I'm a little mad about, which is that a friend of mine was going to use Teddy Cruz
as an architect for her remodel, and I imagine he's much more expensive now as a result of
this video. [LAUGHTER]
So there's been a tremendous amount of evidence that's been emerging over the last 10 to 20
years, taking a look at America's metropolitan regions, and trying to see what the relationship
is between social equity and economic performance; and I've contributed to some of the literature
myself. But what you tend to find out is that those areas that have done a better job have
deconcentrating poverty. Those regions that have done a better job have shrinking distributional
gaps. Those regions that have done a better job at racial desegregation are actually growing
more rapidly and sustainably over time.
Now I know that some of you may be looking at me, gosh, this must be some leftist professor
from the University of Southern California. I used to be a professor at the University
of California, Santa Cruz, a place that doesn't even have grades, right? And –
[LAUGHTER] --has as its mascot the banana slug or as
I used to like to think of it, the fighting banana slug.
But so, if you don't believe me, believe the Cleveland Federal Reserve that did a study
for Fund for our Economic Future, the sort of business philanthropic group in Northeast
Ohio, trying to bring together regional coalitions. They looked at the factors that predict economic
growth, for mid-sized metro regions like Cleveland, 120 of them.
They found the factors you would imagine -- anchor universities, industrial diversity, et cetera.
But perhaps to their surprise, they found that when you deconcentrate poverty, when
you have less racial segregation, when you have less of a distributional gap, you tend
to have more economic growth. More people are invested in human capital, in those kind
of situations. It reflects a more vibrant kind of economy, as Bruce was pointing to
earlier, and it creates the conditions for the sort of consensus that you need to really
move a region forward.
BERNSTEIN: Give us two concrete examples. Give us an example of an area that has been
successful and sort of briefly why; and one that hasn't been successful, and I will give
you the radio host admonition that you have 40 seconds for each.
PASTOR: It's never good to identify a loser. So let me start with -- you know one region
that's been remarkably surprisingly successful is Jacksonville, Florida. It's a place you
don't think of, but it's actually had pretty good sustainable performance relative to the
south in terms of its economic growth and in terms of moving the needle on social equity.
And I think actually one of the secrets in Jacksonville is the Jacksonville Community
Council that brings together business, community, and labor, to be able to kind of form an understanding
of what's going on in that region and create a shared understanding of its problems and
the need for high-quality jobs, et cetera. And when they have a shared understanding
of the problems, then they may have some differences on what the solutions are, but they've been
able to move forward in great ways.
I think -- I'll leave the losers to others.
BERNSTEIN: All right, maybe we'll get somebody before we're through to say that. So, Governor
Hickenlooper, and did everybody know the Governor used to brew beer; this is true.
[LAUGHTER]
I first met the Governor when I went to a townhall meeting convened by the White House
Office of Urban Affairs in 2009, to talk about the fast-track's program in Denver, and one
of the things that I did in sort of preparation for that discussion was to sort of find out
how fast-tracks which, as many of you know, is a referendum -- it's a transit system but
there was a referendum to support it, a sales tax referendum -- which passed in 2004, which
I will remind people was when George W. Bush won the state of Colorado, and one of the
things I wanted to look at was how did Colorado get this. How did Colorado get people to say
"yes, we want to raise our taxes, we want to put money in a transit system?"
And I'd just come off this discussion in New York about congestion charging, where people
had said the opposite. "We don't want to pay us drivers for their transit." And it was
a completely different kind of a discussion. So I wanted to ask Governor Hickenlooper who
was then the Mayor, what was the impetus for deciding that this was something that you
had to do as a region and what was the real sort of horse-trading that went on when you
went out to all those Republican counties -- and there were a lot of them -- and said,
"I need your help to do this."
GOV. JOHN HICKENLOOPER: Well, there were two things. One was the metro Denver had a history
of collaboration on a fairly large-scale, which dated back to the '80s, when all the
wealthy families were moving to the suburbs, that first big migration when it really hit
full stride; that the boards, the art museum, they all feared funding, and basically the
boards all shared their mailing lists, and they passed a one-tenth of one-cent sales
tax for the whole metro region for cultural facilities. They called it the SCFD -- the
Scientific and Cultural Facilities District -- which is much beloved; raises over $40
million a year now; is why Denver has the fourth most visited zoo, fourth most visited
museum in nature and science -- all this stuff came from that. And it created a foundation
of some sense of collaboration.
So when transit came along, and the sprawl and the traffic jams got worse, we went out
in 2003, after I got elected, and we a) had that platform of collaboration, but we started
trying to sell the suburbs. Even the mayors where the light rail line wasn't going anywhere
near their municipality, we pitched them that what the real beneficiary here was not the
person who got in the light rail train and went to and from work. They gave up a certain
amount of freedom.
The person who was the real beneficiary was the person who drove their car to work, still
had their freedom, but did it and saved 20 or 30 minutes a day in their commute time.
And it worked out. We did a bunch of studies and could show that even if you had no light
rail line close to your municipality, your residents traveled everywhere. And that they
would for, I think it was about .28 a day, they would save 23 minutes on the average
in their commute time. And basically, you were paying someone to get out of your way,
which is – [LAUGHTER]
-- no one said it quite that way. But this was kind of the beginning of this --
And I think we're seeing this now on a larger level around the country, that collaboration
is the new competition; that even in business now, if you can find ways to collaborate,
you're going to do better than when you're just ruthlessly competing.
BERNSTEIN: And did you have to promise them anything else? Were you able to just purely
on the persuasiveness of the intellectual arguments able to get all these counties on
board?
HICKENLOOPER: In a few cases, I had to give them my undying love, or put them at the top
of my most cherished persons' list. Mostly, it was a) as the big city mayor, I was going
out to the suburbs wherever I could, and making sure that I wasn't the alpha dog; that they
recognized that I didn't believe we could have a great city without great suburbs. And
I thought great suburbs would really add materially to the city doing well, but that also it was
both ways, and that if we worked together--.
We made treaties essentially, but my predecessors had been poaching each other's businesses.
So the Mayor of Denver would poach a business from Aurora. Denver is about 600,000 people.
Aurora is 300,000 people. They were offered incentives. Just a lot of visceral, almost
hatred, and within six months, when I got elected, the new mayor of Aurora --
I'll tell you a very funny story, just briefly, that the previous -- and my predecessor, Mayor
Webb, was a great mayor. One of the great American mayors. But he was old-fashioned,
and the Mayor of Aurora was a guy named Paul Tauer. And I went and visited Paul Tauer before
I ran for mayor, and I said, is it really the issues or is some of it personality? And
he looked at me, and he was very pugnacious -- a wonderful mayor as well. And he went,
"No! Your -- your airplanes are keeping my citizens awake and you're poaching our businesses
out there."
I said, "wait, wait. If I was Mayor of Denver, and we had a press conference together, and
I made sure you got all the credit, all the ink in the newspapers, all the soundbytes
on TV, would that make a difference?" He goes, "yaugh, yaugh -- it might."
[LAUGHTER]
And so his son became the new Mayor of Aurora, and within six months, we had a written agreement,
agreeing that we would never poach businesses from each other. That it wasn’t adding -- .
The same thing when cities poach businesses from each other, right? That's not helping
the national growth or doing anything except giving handouts to businesses, and I think
distracting them from what they should be doing: building their businesses.
But anyway, we made that agreement not to do any poaching, and that became, again, part
of the basis.
You know, collaboration is like any muscle; the more you use it, the stronger it gets.
And we had a lot -- just the cultural stuff, and then this kind of collaborative approach
toward not poaching from each other. And part of it was, as the big city mayor, I was the
skinny kid with thick glasses and acne. My dad, when I was little, told me if you can't
talk your way out of a fight, you deserve to get whipped. [LAUGHTER]
When you're dealing with other mayors, sometimes that serves you well.
BERNSTEIN: By the way, true story, one of Governor, or then-Mayor, Hickenlooper's campaign
advertisements was him in a shower -- which you can find online.
[LAUGHTER]
HICKENLOOPER: That's a long story. It's not what she made it sound like.
[LAUGHTER]
BERNSTEIN: It had to do with negative campaigning, and we'll just leave it to that. Now MarySue
Barrett, you're going to have to follow that -- that image in everybody's mind -- but the
Metropolitan Planning Council worked with a number of businesses in Illinois to pass
a subsidy for employers to help people buy affordable housing. And I'd like you to talk
a little bit about that campaign, and organizing the campaign, because one of the things I
was writing about that was a big question in my mind, is, how did you get -- I mean
I understand why employers want housing, but employers want a lot of things. They want
extra lanes on highways, maybe. They want more parking spaces. They want great schools.
So I'm wondering how did you get them focused on that as an issue and then sort of move
them to the place where they were going to become part of the lobby for that?
MARYSUE BARRETT: Self-interest. So this idea was inspired by Silicon Valley and it was
a decade ago, and we were in a very different economic climate. What's interesting to me
is how adaptable this tool has been and what a conversation-starter it has been for us
to achieve multiple other goals.
So, literally, it was one employer back in the year 2000. It was an exurban manufacturer
of smoke detectors and fire alarms; 900 mostly Latino workers coming from 90 minutes away,
oftentimes; and huge turnover. Cost to the employer.
So this was an innovative CEO, now my board chair, and this company said, "well, I think
we can save some money." We looked at running some numbers. We adapted a tool that Carl
Guardino's group had been involved with, with the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. And it
didn't quite make sense -- their contacts to our contacts. So, drew a boundary of 15
miles because it makes sense to be tighter in some locations -- but this was an exurban
area -- and said, if an employee had good standing and was within a certain wage-earning
scale, had an opportunity to get housing counseling upfront and then a $5,000 down payment assistance.
Altogether by outsourcing that set of services, that employer spent $150,000 in the first
year; counseled about 60; housed about 35 of those went through the process into homes,
mostly first-time homebuyers.
They recouped $150,000 and saved an additional $100,000 in 12 months. I challenge any of
us to look at a benefit that an employer can offer that has that kind of return on investment.
So from that we were off to the races; we were able to get the state of Illinois to
actually provide some matching funds; some tax credits for employers. Illinois is not
--
BERNSTEIN: Wait, wait. Don't gloss over that.
BARRETT: Well, it was a surprise actually. This was under our former Governor -- you
know, the one who was just convicted. [LAUGHTER]
Did care about housing, but you find your champions. So it was that return on investment
argument again.
BERNSTEIN: But why -- I mean obviously the state of Illinois wasn't facing the kind of
crisis it is now.
BARRETT: But it's been renewed, two times.
BERNSTEIN: But at that time the state still was having to spend some money. I mean it
was in the form of a tax credit. But that's still money.
BARRETT: It is. But be able to show 4:1 leveraging of those dollars -- again there's very few
economic development incentives. We're in the poaching game too often ourselves. This
very modest investment -- of the counseling help and the tax credits -- for every dollar
the state of Illinois spends, they are able to leverage $4 of private investment.
So what I want to share with you though is that this tool has become very adaptable.
So obviously we're in a very different economic climate, but this has been useful in a city
context. We've used it for our Chicago Housing Authority Plan for Transformation, to get
employers to help anchor the market rate and the affordable component of those mixed income
communities.
We've used it in this down economy. There are certain sectors that are quicker to adopt:
healthcare institutions, universities, manufacturers. They're tied to their place. They want to
stay where they're at, and they need some help to do that, but our model is not just
to help; it's great to help house these individuals and to stabilize communities, but we're getting
those employers to stay with us and advocating for policy changes. And that's, I think, what
shows some promise.
BERNSTEIN: Was it just that you came to them with this idea for housing before they got
involved in lobbying for something else? For example, a lot of Chambers and Commerces do
talk about highway expansion. We need another lane because of congestion, which sort of,
you know, putting aside whether that works; I mean that is something that people believe
in and are willing to organize around. So I'm wondering, was it just because you came
to them with this idea and they just grabbed it? Or, was there something sort of really
inherent in this housing idea that you think could be replicated anywhere?
BARRETT: I don't think housing was the selling point, and in our region we've got all the
race and class tangles, are as bad in Chicago as anyplace else. And so affordable housing
is not a good term. We've been using the term, workforce housing, just to kind of keep the
conversation going. That's been the less charged of a term. But we can all be for helping workers
be successful; communities be vibrant and successful; families succeed; and sort of
tie it to -- for the employers -- again self-interest was this driving thing.
So to tie it to reducing their bottomline expenditures was a starting point. Why they
stayed with us on accessing and securing some of these incentives, and now working on other
policy issues is I think as well self-interest. I mean if we can work on business climate
issues, it is good for them, but it's also good for their workers; it's good for their
communities. If the communities in which they are located are functioning better, then they're
going to be able to put more resources into things that are going to grow their business.
We're taking this model and now expanding it to a menu of commute options. Employer-assisted
housing would be one on the menu. But to help -- just piloting it with about a dozen firms
this year -- but to allow an employer to pick off the tree of different incentives that
make sense for them -- it might be van pooling or transit incentives or a biking incentives
program -- but all about helping reduce their expenditures and the employee's expenditure.
We also give them some great public relations. I mean really, when a company has done this,
they tend to get a halo-effect which is nice too.
BERNSTEIN: Ben Hecht, your organization, Living Cities, is working in a number of regions
to promote bringing people to the table, and one of the questions that you sent in is what
is the secret sauce, by which I think you were referring to the special sauce in a McDonald's
ad which serves "special sauce;" seems sort of more accessible than "secret sauce."
So I'm wondering in these two examples -- Colorado, Illinois -- what do you think was the "special
sauce." That whole McDonald business model is you can produce it in mass quantities.
So how could that happen?
BEN HECHT: First, I want the record to reflect I was not referring to McDonald's at all.
But I think it's a couple of things. One of them, I think the phenomenon that you see
here is really that the political system is dragging far behind the reality and the way
that people want to work.
And so years ago, in a prior life, as a law professor, I taught state and local government
law, and what you learn, Governor, of course, is that the governor of the state makes -- creates
-- the locals. And the locals wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the state.
And so what's happened over the years going back to the beginning of the nation is that
the states created hundreds of locals because they made sense at the time. And today they
don't really make sense anymore. The idea that you need hundreds of school boards in
a single state; or thousands of little districts for individual problems.
And so what's happened is essentially while that's really hard to change because you have
elected people for each of those individual things, the people are solving the problem
their own ways. And so number one, I think what you have -- and the Governor talked about
it, Manuel talked about it -- they're essentially collaborating using whatever authority they
have.
And sometimes it's "real" authority, where you have visionary political leaders who have
the political authority, but more often than not, it's "apparent" authority. People are
going to use whatever political capital they have to come together to solve a problem.
And usually the problem takes a really long time to fix. The fast-track wasn't born overnight.
It's not going to be done overnight, what they've done in Chicago.
So the first thing is there's this kind of trend or momentum towards people coming together
-- what I think of as at a new table -- and largely what it is, in my mind, it's a new
civic infrastructure, because in many ways our civic infrastructure -- I think worldwide
-- collapsed. Some places it never existed. Other places, corruption sort of made it ineffective.
But in many places people are coming together with their "real" and "apparent" authority
from the public sector, from the private sector, nonprofits, bringing together all types of
capital, and they're essentially saying, okay, we've got to solve our problem.
And people know that, number one, they want people out of their way; others want to get
out of a place and quickly get to the jobs. People know that the jobs are not going to
be in their neighborhood where they live. They know they're going to be somewhere else.
Commonsense -- people know the way things have to work. And so what we're trying to
do is ride that momentum and try to go to those places that say, we have a critical
mass of leaders who are going to come to this one table, and they're all going to bring
what they have, and they're going to hold each other accountable over a long period
of time, and they're going to set some goals. They're going to watch to see whether or not
they're being met; they're going to adjust. They're going to say "how do we use all of
the financial resources we have in place?" And, "where possible, we're going to build
new ones that are by definition regional."
And so, in California, for example, there's been a really remarkable fund that's been
created, started through this great community's collaborative. It's, God knows, hundreds of
counties come together. You probably know. But really, probably 20-some counties in the
Bay Area who came together and said, "this is a regional economic challenge we have to
get people around."
And so in the last few months, they've literally built a fund that will help people to buy
and acquire land throughout that multi-county region, to be able to make this thing work.
BERNSTEIN: So continue with the table metaphor: what is the sauce that's being brought? Is
there a particular -- in each of these cases, there obviously was a convergence of interest.
But there were catalysts that sort of -- everybody wanted the same thing, but everybody wants
the same thing at a lot of places and they don't get things like fast-tracks or employer-assisted
housing.
HECHT: I think it ultimately comes down to leadership and so what --
BERNSTEIN: On whose part?
HECHT: On an array of people. So a governor, a political leader, a private sector leader.
I strongly believe local philanthropy has to have a point of view about what the world
needs to look like; where they are. Nonprofits, community folks. They need to come together,
and it needs to be able to withstand a four- or eight-year term of a mayor or a governor.
Or withstand the charismatic nonprofit that everyone love, no longer being there.
And one of the models that has really convinced me that this can work came out of Cincinnati,
an initiative called Strive, and it really was led by civic leaders, and they looked
at each other and they said "what's the biggest problem that our region faces?" And what they
said was, "we're failing our kids. We're failing our kids from the day they're born to the
day they're actually expected to leave the house," which if you have 20-year-olds like
I do, they don't leave the house -- but assuming they leave the house, and they fail all away
along the way --
BERNSTEIN: Or you have a 30-year commitment.
HECHT: Yeah. And so, and what they said was, "you know what? We're all failing them." Our
political leadership is failing them, our corporate leadership is failing; our Procter
& Gamble, Toyota. Our United Way is failing them, who funds all the preschool stuff. Our
schools are failing them, from who's supposed to educate zero to five, who's supposed to
educate P to 12, who's supposed to do community college and beyond.
And so they all looked at each other. They said, "we all suck." [LAUGHTER]
And they basically set a series of goals, and they said this is where we are, this is
where we want to go by when. And they collect the data, and the people who are good at collecting
data -- like University of Southern California and the like -- they collect the data, they
report it out, and every year they report it out. And the superintendent of schools
are held accountable. The United Way who funds the preschool programs are held accountable.
But it's basically this mutually-reinforcing public way that the leaders are literally
holding themselves accountable.
Last thing: one of the women who led it is now the head of the SUNY system - Nancy Zimpher.
And Nancy is an extraordinary leader, and we supported this work, and we supported them
looking to see if this model of this framework of "one table of leadership" could work.
And my staff person came in and said, did you hear that Nancy's leaving Cincinnati?
And I looked at her and I said, "we're dead!"
You know, we invested in this charismatic leader. I know I believe in this "one table"
concept. But I don't know how much I believe it.
[LAUGHTER]
And it's now been more than two years. The effort is stronger than it ever was. The other
leaders who were at the table stepped up and it's happening -- and that's just one example
-- but it's happening all over the place. It's a very different type of leadership model.
It's distributed power but it's reality-based. It's based on the way the world works.
BERNSTEIN: Did you want to jump in on that?
PASTOR: I was thinking to add two things, one was actually about kids, because I have
a son who is a musician, whose backup career is as an actor, and –
[LAUGHTER] -- he did move back at one point and after
a month or so, I said to him, Wakim, what part of empty nest do you not understand?
[LAUGHTER] He seemed to have the nest part down; the
empty part escaped him.
But what I did want to say is that I think that these collaborations are very important.
Part of what they do is help build bridges across different gaps. I sometimes describe
these as being kind of face-to-face, race-to-race, and place-to-place, in ways that the conversation
of Washington isn't at all, right?, where people really come face-to-face with the consequences
of the decisions they're making and how they impact their neighbors, that can help build
a community or not. Now I think part of the secret sauce in these
as well is to understand that it's not just --
BERNSTEIN: "Special sauce."
PASTOR: Special sauce. Is that it's not just one institution or one sector that will drive
it. But one that we have not mentioned is social movement organizations. If you want
to make sure that inclusion, fairness and justice is part of the debate about how we
form regions, then these social movement organizations that have risen up to deal with this stuff
at a regional level, though the sort of groups that are under the partnerships for working
families, the labor-affiliated sort of think tanks moving at justice and economic development
agenda in different metro areas, you have FRESC for example in Denver, which has helped
keep Denver honest, right?, even as the business community is doing what it needs to do.
You've got the Gamaliel organization, which has been organizing around these issues. You've
got the Right to the City Network, that's been trying to deal with these issues of gentrification.
So I think if we think about how to make sure we really have a Just City, we need to think
about democratic participation and social movements.
BERNSTEIN: All right, so let's talk about problems with regionalism because I've thought
of a few bad examples just as we've started this panel. But we did a documentary earlier
this year called "Back of the Bus," which you can find at TransportationNation.org/backofthebus.
But one of the things we looked at was Oakland. And the Oakland Airport connector and we actually
didn't dive into this too deeply, but during our research the example came up that you've
got this set of regional interests making decisions about transit, and that when you
have a set of regional interests making decisions about transit, the people who live in a city
like Oakland, they're having to listen to what their grandfather wants at the table
and not really getting to say what they want.
As a result, you have a system where the bus service in Oakland is getting cut, and they
almost didn't even get a stop on the airport connector that was going to go through Oakland.
So that's an example where you have a lot of regional interest, but then you have the
most powerful interests sort of getting to dictate.
I'd like to maybe start with you MarySue. How do you deal with that?
BARRETT: You know, the panel just before us got into some great ideas about the equalizing
force of technology. I also liked what I heard as a phrase in this video about scarcity being
the platform through which innovative approaches happen.
I really believe in both of those things. We work in a collaborative that's I think
the best example of a number of cross-suburban collaboratives. But the biggest and the one
that's starting to have some traction is in the south suburbs.
I think that you do need organizations kind of pushing you, and this is the part of our
region that would have been screwed in the past by those regional decisions. They didn't
get their fair share of "fill in the blank." They're the one part of the region that doesn't
have transit service -- direct transit service -- serving most of the communities.
So 40-some communities within South Cook County banded together. They heard the lingo of the
Obama Administration -- sustainable community, livability principles. Sounds good! And they
said, where's the rewards? And there were very few. So they came together and said we're
going to both influence our regional planning process, which was underway, but they always
seem to be underway. So we just completed a 20/40 process that's really innovative.
It wasn't the big downtown groups, committees, deciding it. It was bottom-up, a lot of community
forums, a lot of technology, keypad polling tools.
They got some of their priorities into that, but then if that's the endgame then you're
going to be waiting a long time. So they have designed a strategy and talked to leaders
at the state -- mostly state and federal levels -- about rewards. So slowly, there's been
some changes to some longstanding federal programs to actually reward communities that
band together across these boundaries and go after dollars.
We use this term "interjurisdictional" -- I'd someone to help me come up with a better term,
but --
BERNSTEIN: That's a bad term.
BARRETT: It's a bad term. But working across borders also makes you think like Mexico.
I don't know what to call it. But obviously capacity is this huge, huge problem that in
this scarcity moment that we're in, communities don't have the resources to apply for some
of these -- if you're not Chicago, if you're not Denver. So given that, and that the way
the world works is that the silos that dollars come spewing out of isn't useful, the south
suburb said "enough, we're not going to do it."
In the last year-and-a-half, they have together secured $19 million of funding from DOE, HUD,
all these different sources, within a framework of a vision they call their "green timezone."
It's about cargo-oriented and transit-oriented investment.
So when they get dollars, for example, for closures, they don't just sprinkle it. They
target it around a node or an economic development strategy.
So I think that they feel that something has changed for them. In the past it used to be
dictated and now they're in the driver's seat.
BERNSTEIN: You won as governor, so clearly that was sort of a ratification of this regional
approach on some level. But I'm wondering sort of if you have any sense about --
PASTOR: He had another shower ad, I think. [LAUGHTER]
BERNSTEIN: There was an ad and a horse, too. What are the pitfalls? It's now 2011, this
was something that was in 2004. In those seven years, what sort of unexpected consequences
did you find from this regional approach that you might tell other mayors or governors "watch
out for this?"
HICKENLOOPER: I think first, let me say that I agree with the scarcity notion. In 2004,
we were coming out of a recession there. I couldn't help but notice -- that I did the
math being a math whizz -- well, maybe not quite. But 75 years from the Ford Foundation,
that takes you back to pretty close to 1935, right? A time of pretty severe scarcity as
well, and a lot of times people were more easily pushed there.
I think what we're all talking about is the alignment of self-interest at all kinds of
levels, and one of the real pitfalls is the disconnect between federal funding processes
and state versus local. Actually I think one of the -- and I saw that Secretary Donovan's
going to be here later -- but one of the great innovations that the Obama Administration
-- I haven't seen them get credit for it -- but for the first time in anybody's memory, the
Secretary of Transportation meets with the Secretary of HUD, meets with the administrator
of the EPA every several weeks. Every three or four weeks. So that if you're applying
half a billion dollars for transportation, you better have affordable housing around
your light rail stops. You better be doing brown field redevelopment.
BERNSTEIN: It's like the Green Cabinet or something, right? Is that the name?
HICKENLOOPER: I don't even think you have to go there. I think you have to say they're
running government like a business. They're actually orchestrating their investments to
get the maximum yield and benefit. You better have workforce training centers close to your
light rail; have a plan that's integrated, which as a local official is breathtaking,
and allows us to really contemplate breaking down some of those potential pitfalls.
Obviously with fast-tracks -- inflation, commodity costs going up so fast and then the recession
-- and we got fast-tracks passed -- I neglected my own punchline -- but we had 32 out of 32
mayors. Right? Every single mayor, large cities like Denver and Aurora, small towns like Foxfire,
Republicans and Democrats, all 32 mayors, unanimously supported a 4/10ths of a percent
sales tax. Right? Which is pretty much unheard of. And even with that collaborative effort,
you can't control the economy.
And so all of a sudden, sales tax revenues dropped down. Commodities were going up. And
you're in this vise of how you keep faith with the public. When you had all that true
alignment of self-interest, how do you make sure you deliver on that? And just like a
business or any government -- any organization -- you roll up your sleeves and say, all right,
how are we going to do it cheaper? How are we going to do it better? How do we take this
scarcity and use it to be innovative and find new ways of getting it done?
BERNSTEIN: And you're in the process of answering that now, right?
HICKENLOOPER: Exactly.
BERNSTEIN: Can you go back to the voters of 2012 or ask for more money?
HICKENLOOPER: That has not been determined. They're looking now at what are some innovative
ways that you can fund things, like one of the light-rail lines out to the airport? They
did the 3P, a partnership between private and public and federal monies, but having
a private partner putting up a large chunk of the money, in exchange for them being able
to help manage it. Those kinds of ideas, we probably wouldn't have done if we had been
forced to by scarcity.
BERNSTEIN: We are already at the moment of asking for Q&A, but I'm going to ask for the
first question from Bruce Katz because the issue was raised of this sort of you mentioned
in your remarks about stealing from other localities, was one of the big economic development
strategies prior to the Crash.
So I wanted to give you the opportunity to ask any of the panelists about that because
I do think that that is a still very big barrier to regional cooperation, is that people feel
like they have to get the things for their area first.
KATZ: Okay, well, I was in the middle of a tweet.
[LAUGHTER] So you just -- as the Governor, no. Anyone
who's on Twitter, you can only really do one thing at a time. I think the question is really
for the Governor because we make the proposition, and I think Manuel sort of backs it up, that
those places that stop the poaching then have more resources to dedicate to strengthen their
strengths in a unified and collective way.
Why is this so hard to get across other metropolitan areas, particularly in the older parts of
the country -- northeast, midwest -- which frankly are so frag -- . I mean we've adopted
the 13th century British model of government in a lot of these places.
So you, from the mayor perspective and now at the gubernatorial perspective, why is it
so difficult to translate this notion of metropolitan collaboration across the country in a more
rapid and accelerated fashion?
Now I'm going to tweet again.
HICKENLOOPER: I think these guys could probably answer it -- I mean as close -- they'd probably
answer better than I. I look at it as an appetite that is almost irresistible for elected officials
to have a large company -- and we're talking to people as well as anyone else is, even
though I recognize it's not healthy.
Not only is it a waste of resources, it's a distraction to your businesses. It's a distraction
to your government, and that focus is critically important.
And I think -- it's a little bit -- during the campaign, I gained about 11 pounds, and
I'm a skinny guy. I've never had to diet and get, as my wife would point out, a pot belly
on a slender person is not appealing. [LAUGHTER]
So for the first time in my life I had to try and control my appetite and really watch
what I ate, and what I learned very rapidly is you're always hungry. My level of empathy
has grown dramatically for others who are challenged by that.
And I think there's that same thing of that constant hunger and appetite that if you poach
a company, suddenly it's in the newspapers, and you've done this big thing, and everybody
feels somehow it's massaged, that sore spot. And it seems to be -- we were able to do it
-- we've gotten literally every major suburb that has a budget for economic development
would do any poaching in Denver. They signed treaties with Denver and with each other.
So they're not poaching at all.
But I brought this up with the governors at the National Governors Association, and there
are a few states that looked at me like I was crazy. No, we've got some big opportunities.
"Talk to us in three years."
BERNSTEIN: Manuel Pastor?
PASTOR: You know there's a notion, this idea of either collaborating or paying attention
to these issues of inclusion, as something that really only be done in high-growth regions,
right? So that somehow it's the province of a Silicon Valley or it's the province of the
Bay Area or Denver during its boom.
We actually did a study for Brookings in which we took on that argument, and we did the econometric
work, and it turns out that the growth-damaging impacts of high poverty concentration, lack
of collaboration, et cetera, are actually more severe in the weak market areas than
they are in the other areas, right?
So I don't know politically why it's getting out there, but sometimes we think evidence
will make a difference. Sometimes it doesn't, right? And I think we then need to think about
what's the framing, what's the story, how do we get people to -- ?
BERNSTEIN: Only if you live in a facts-based reality.
PASTOR: I know. There's this great new book called "Uncommon Common Ground --"
[LAUGHTER] -- that David Mortimer handed to me and asked
me to mention, which of course, I was one of the co-authors of; it's about to be made
into a major motion picture. [LAUGHTER]
In which I'll be portrayed by Antonio Banderas.
But one of the things we say about the title is that people tend to go for the lowest common
denominator. Either lowest common denominator of division or the lowest common denominator
of what's the minimum thing we can agree on. I think in order to really move things ahead,
you have to go to the highest common ground. You have to get at the tough issues of who's
going to pay for that transit. You have to get at these issues of the racial differences
between cities and suburbs. You have to deal with the changing demography in terms of immigrants,
et cetera. How do we push ourselves to that highest common ground, and that is the secret
of collaboration, conversation, and a lot of that really is happening at the metropolitan
level in our country.
HECHT: I also think you have to think about what the Mayor said, and we see in other places
as well, in the last panel, which is you have to have somebody who says "when I'm out of
office I still care what happens." Because when you're in office, you have some immediate
short-term victories and you get the press.
The other is, and I think Bruce and I both worked with the mayors of St. Paul, Minneapolis,
and those guys -- Mayors Rybak and Coleman -- they basically are saying "we have to work
together because basically we're a powerhouse in the metro area, number one. Number two,
we have to reinvent what's the next economy for our area."
And they, like Bruce was saying, it's got to be clean; it's got to build on the fact
they still have Fortune 500 companies. But it's got to reenergize the entrepreneurial
culture of the place.
But they're basically saying our definition of leadership is not just about the four,
eight, 12 years I'm in power, but how do I position my legacy, is why I'm in power, as
much as wanting to get reelected. And that's critical.
BERNSTEIN: All right, let's take some questions before I call on somebody else.
QUESTION: Mayor Quan from Oakland, the city of Oakland wanted to respond briefly.
BERNSTEIN: Please stand so that the video can capture you.
QUESTION: I just am going to quickly respond on the transportation issue, and I missed
the introduction, so let me just say that in this country we spend less than 18 percent
of our federal dollars on public transportation, so to me that's the real fight.
Oakland wants the airport connector actually. The majority of the City Council, including
I, supported that because we have an international airport, and for me when I talk to Chinese
investors, that airport connector is actually very critical. But that shouldn't be pitted
against the fact that I need good public transportation. Oakland ironically used to have great electric
cars before they were all destroyed in the '40s and the '50s. So I just wanted to make
that point. Thank you.
BERNSTEIN: Thank you. I think we have a question in the middle here. Please wait for the mike
and stand and identify yourself when you speak.
QUESTION: Hi, I'm Miles Rapoport, and I'm the President of Demos, and I guess I wanted
to -- something that's been a little bit discomforting to me in the conversation is the question
about the role for government, for the public sector itself.
Ben, you were describing almost like this alternative table because the governmental
have failed, so a completely different one has to be put in place. And I know Governor
Hickenlooper and Manuel, you both come from states where there are huge challenges to
the government doing its role. The Taxpayer Bill of Rights in Colorado has been a model
for how to handcuff the government and make sure that it can't do its job so that other
things are required to take place, and of course, California's governance problems are
legendary.
PASTOR: We're number one. [LAUGHTER]
BARRETT: We're number two.
QUESTION: So I guess the point and the question is, isn't it important to a) make the government
function the way it should, and on the second hand, to really defend the more robust role
for government rather than just sort of placing it to the side. It does seem to me that still
the public sector is the place where the resources ought to be made available to do the transportation
and do the kinds of things that you're all talking about; and we can't afford to let
it aside or let it be undermined by things like TABOR or the Proposition 13, or 2-1/2
in Massachusetts, or any of those things that have happened. What do we do? How do you deal
with that?
BERNSTEIN: Let's talk about that. Governor, you want to -- ?
HICKENLOOPER: I think part of what we're losing, or what we've lost, we certainly are losing
is the battle over public sentiment, and I think that that's a big challenge for all
of us in public service, whether we're in nonprofits or in government.
Lincoln, he said with public sentiment nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed.
That is why those who mold public sentiment go deeper than those who enact statutes or
pronounce decisions, and we haven't done sufficient work at articulating what is the role of government
and how did it evolve from our founding fathers? I think there are a dozen different arguments
you can use out there. We've been trying to use one which I think is one of many different
truths, but that our Declaration of Independence basically guarantees that in this country
almost unique in the world guarantees equal opportunity to all citizens under the law.
You could almost ... and say the Constitution becomes an enabling document around that.
Well, if that's true, that is the rationale behind public education, transportation, why
every person deserves a chance to get to any job. A lot of what we've been talking about
around racial equity descends on everybody being able to get to every job. All those
things kind of flow out of that kind of an argument, but you never hear anyone talking
about some of those basic foundational arguments.
It's all just about "we need more taxes," or "we need this," or "we need that," and
it becomes so adversarial you end up -- . It's like the attack ads, and we didn't get into
attack ads, but there's a reason why General Motors doesn't do attack ads against Ford
-- of course, no one would do anything against Ford, not in this context -- but Coke doesn't
do attack ads against Pepsi because they do it back and forth to each other and they diminish
the entire market.
And yet politicians, in the end, resort to the attack ads because it is effective in
a short-term benefit and they figure afterwards they'll resolve their differences, which they
never do; people are so bitter. And it keeps us from again articulating those fundamental
arguments: what is government and why should we all be -- what is that group empathy that
allows us all to invest in each other's good?
BERNSTEIN: Do you feel that that can turn? Because obviously that is where the debate
is now. Huge amounts of money going into attack ads, basically attacking the fundamental -- "government
is bad, government is bad, government is bad." If people hear this 24/7, then why should
we be surprised when they turn around and say "government is bad."
I'm wondering if you feel that this is sort of the low point -- is this the trough? And
is going to get better? Or -- ?
HICKENLOOPER: For goodness sakes, I hope so. I mean there is the alignment of self-interest.
People will always follow what's successful, and I talk about it, try to hold up all the
time. We came out of that positive campaign. We didn't do a single negative ad. I won by
13 or 14 points. And we passed with a Republican house and a Democratic Senate, making some
of the worst budget cuts in the history of Colorado -- we passed our budget by 80 percent
between the two houses. Right?
And I think that could never have happened without a positive campaign, without some
of these more kind of basic arguments and kind of foundational arguments about government's
role. And hopefully, that will get picked up in other places. We haven't seen any inclination
of that yet. But sure, it's just a matter of time.
BERNSTEIN: Hope springs eternal.
HICKENLOOPER: Yeah.
BERNSTEIN: MarySue?
BARRETT: I don't know if any of us were suggesting an abdication of the role of government to
define problems and to plot strategy, at least the path towards the strategy. But this alignment
of self-interests that we've been talking about requires, especially the federal government,
to set a platform that rewards different kinds of actions.
The cross agency collaboration you were talking about, Governor, is new, and it needs to spread
further. There's a whole host of metropolitan areas -- Chicago being one of them -- where
it's bi-state or tri-state, and just like I was talking about earlier with the municipalities,
this being an unnatural act because it's not rewarded. If this is the way our economies
function, well, then the intermodal ports ought to be rewarded to work across and to
provide rewards for nonpoaching treaties.
I mean this is the kind of feeling, here's the innovation at the local level. Who's rewarding
that? Who's encouraging that? That's what I want a government to do.
HECHT: Andrea, could I say one thing, too? I totally -- Miles -- completely agree with
you. In fact we spent a significant amount of resources trying to help the public sector
do the public sector role. Not even necessarily lead. Just do their role. And I think for
too long, there has been a big workaround. And it's like, well, we'll nonprofit our way
out of this problem. Or we'll private sector our way out of this problem. Or the government
will solve the problem, and the reality is, you need them all.
And so we work with the Kennedy School where we bring 30, 35 chiefs of staff of mayors
and county executives together to basically -- we push stuff at them. They pull us toward
things. But more importantly, they work together because they have no networks to figure out
how do we figure out what they did in Chicago or Denver and the like?
But the reality is that there's been such a negative -- when you say that government
is bad and we want less of it: That's what you get. And then when you say, well, why
don't they spend our money well? And why can't they leverage the money we give them 3:1?
It's because no one's there to do it.
And so, we really do believe that you have to actually build that public sector capacity
back to where it can actually use the public sector dollars that are going to it in the
smartest way.
PASTOR: You know, I think just to add to that, that part of this too is kind of the narrative
or the story that we tell ourselves about the role of government in our lives. I've
been talking -- recently, I've ended a lot of talks by talking about my dad who passed
away last year. He was 95 years old, which is pretty old, and he came to this country
in the 1930s with papers that were imperfect, and when WWII came, he was actually in New
York, he was given a choice between being deported or joining the U.S. Army. So he gave
a penny to my cousin Carlitos, who flipped it, and the penny came up a particular way,
and you know, he went to the war and came back safe, and a generation later, his son
is a full professor at USC, which would be even better if I could get football tickets.
But just the same -- . [LAUGHTER]
And what I like to say is that's an American story. It's a great story, it's an American
story, and it's the wrong story, because in the 1930s, my dad had no papers but he had
a union defending his rights. And when he came back from the war, there was a GI Bill,
which meant that he could buy a house in an entering suburb, through the ability to finance
it, and he was also able to go to L.A. Trade Tech. He had a 6th grade education. And he
was able to go from being a janitor to being an air conditioner repairman, and we went
from being poor to being working class.
And I went to decent public schools, because we were investing in them as a society, and
when it came time for me to go to college, which was not expected, there was affirmative
action to take a chance on a kid like me who did not fit the typical profile.
And that's the American story. It is a story of individuals and what they need to do to
get ahead, but it's also a story of the public policies we put in place and actually the
social movements that helped put them in place as well.
And I think if we can recraft the narrative, so that people really begin to understand
the important role of government at helping us realize our individual dreams. It's not
standing in the way; it can empower us.
It means we do have to have a more effective government, et cetera, but we do need to retell
this narrative as well. [APPLAUSE]
BERNSTEIN: All right, I think we have time for one more question, which I'm going to
take from the back. If anybody has one. Back here, please stand up and please identify
yourself.
QUESTION: Thank you. I'm Jamienne Studley from Public Advocates, and I thank you, Andrea,
for featuring the Oakland Airport Connector on the show that you did. There are a couple
of themes that come out of that, that connect up many things that we're talking about. And
they go to the role of government and the role of low-income people in creating the
vision for government.
So one is just doing what we said we would already do -- sticking with it and doing it
right. We used the airport connector story to insist that the Department of Transportation
enforce Title VI, and they are talking to all the other departments about enforcing
Title VI -- making sure that the opportunities for low-income people are included. So that's
one way we can just do -- as Mr. Rapoport said -- let's do the things that we said we
were going to do, even as we think about what else we can do.
And the second piece of this is that we can help create the vision. It's not just a matter
of participating or even being the decisionmakers, although those are both important. But to
the extent that folks can create the vision for what government is going to do, it will
sound more like what Prof. Pastor just talked about. So we've put before the regional planners
for the Bay Area, the idea of equity environment and jobs-based scenarios for making big public
investments.
I'd love to hear if you have time to answer it as a question -- other places where you
see that kind of energy to get out front of issues taking place in parallel ways? Thank
you.
BERNSTEIN: All right, let's quickly maybe get a response from each of you: other areas
where you see these kinds of things happening?
PASTOR: Well, I've got to say I'm enamored with my own Los Angeles. And I know that we
haven't done as well on the economic indicators. But what's interesting I think going on in
L.A. is there's been a vibrant social justice movement which is now really turning itself
to the issues that Bruce was raising, which is not simply how you think about distribution
after the economy has somehow generated growth, but how do you actually get in on the ground
floor of the Green Economy by thinking about railcar manufacturing for example in Los Angeles
-- about retrofitting, et cetera?
And so I see that a lot of the social movement organizations are really beginning to think
about how to generate an economic development model that works; I find that very inspiring.
BERNSTEIN: MarySue?
BARRETT: I'm bullish about a particular opportunity in Chicago right now to look at bus rapid
transit. But instead of the way we usually make infrastructure decisions, you know kind
of "who asks?," "how long has it been on the list of projects?" and "it's only about moving
people or dealing with congestion?" -- a whole different set of questions and measurements
which are driven by what communities are asking for or are demanding.
So it's about measuring access and diminishing food deserts; it's about access to educational
institutions, about redevelopment potential, and nodes.
And so, that kind of getting government to be responsive to what local communities and
change agent organizations are asking for, that's the kind of institutionalization and
then I think potential for rewards. If at any point, we have an infrastructure bank,
or we have -- I don't think we'll have a t-bill anytime soon on the transportation side, but
we might have some pilots for transformative investments -- and I think the ones that are
promising in many, many regions are the ones where we can measure and then talk about the
multiple benefits to people.
And I do think bus rapid transit is one that has potential in a lot of places.
BERNSTEIN: Governor?
HICKENLOOPER: That's why people like Ray LaHood and Sean Donovan, have been so successful
I think in the administration. You know, I go back to a program we started several years
ago in Denver, we called "One Home, One Congregation." We saw that there were roughly 1100 congregations
in various ... and 1400 homeless families. And we said what would happen if you could
get each congregation to adopt -- not taken into their homes but raise a downpayment and
first month's rent for housing, and then put together four or five or six mentors who would
help this homeless family -- usually a single parent -- work their way out of homelessness?
And we had a prayer breakfast. We had about 400 people there and kind of planted the seed.
And now we're at the point we've had over 300 congregations. We've had over 2600 individuals
helped over 2100 volunteers. About 80 percent of the volunteers wanted to do it again. So
they're benefiting from it. And the likelihood of these homeless families staying in housing
is almost double what it is by having these mentors who call a couple of times a week
and make sure that they are not slipping through the cracks; that their car hasn't broken down;
that they've still got to get to work on time. That basic support of someone being interested
in them as they are in this critical moment has been so powerful.
In the end, it wasn't just government -- sort of what we're talking about -- it was the
faith-based community with a bunch of nonprofits working together to kind of help implement.
Government was the convener and the catalyst. I think those things -- again in times of
scarcity -- become powerful solutions.
BERNSTEIN: Ben Hecht, you get the last word.
HECHT: Great! So I'd say most promising in the near-term I think is in the Twin Cities,
where all the jurisdictions, it's not just Minneapolis and St. Paul, but they've come
together with a real focus on using transportation as a way to equalize opportunity for people,
wherever they are in the region. I think that's kind of -- we'll see short-term gains in that
pretty soon.
I think, and maybe this is a surprising vote, and I'll look at Mac, and he'll laugh at me,
but I think Detroit is the real laboratory, where amidst chaos and scarcity will come
some incredible things.
And I think we'll see an amazing amount of not only diverse initiatives coming up, but
they'll be very organic, and I think in many ways they've learned how to deal with the
fact that their government is not stable. They've learned to deal with the fact that
they've had less and less money over 20, 25 years, and it's in its early stages, but it's
created an environment that I think we're going to see what the future of America is
going to look like.
BERNSTEIN: All right! Well, thanks very much for the Ford Foundation for convening this
panel, and thanks to everyone. I learned a lot.
[APPLAUSE]
[END OF SESSION]