The mayors, who have to make government work
Across most of America, the governments of workaday cities and towns don’t have the luxury or the capacity for the political gridlock that plagues national politics because, for one thing, the garbage would pile up.
Though the federal government draws the lion’s share of media attention, the level of governance that most affects Americans’ daily lives is not in far-off Washington, D.C., but a few blocks away on Main Street.
That’s why 40 mayors gathered in New York City last week for the inaugural session of the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, a collaboration between Harvard University and Bloomberg Philanthropies, a nonprofit foundation created by businessman and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
“Local government is close to the people. Mayors are most immediately held accountable when something goes wrong,” said Jorrit de Jong, lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) and the initiative’s faculty director. “We also see at this time there’s a moment for cities … Cities feel like they can’t rely very much on the federal government, so they’ll have to deal with social inequality, climate change, and economic development themselves.”
De Jong said that Bloomberg, whose $32 million gift last year helped create the initiative, wants to foster creativity and innovation in cities and help them become high-performing organizations.
“Nobody else is going to take care of these problems,” de Jong said.
The three-day executive session, which wrapped up July 19, was developed and taught by faculty from HKS and Harvard Business School (HBS) and included comments from Harvard Provost Alan Garber. The gathering was just a start. For the next year, it will be followed up with remote, online sessions through HBS’s HBX Live online learning platform. The initiative also will offer programming for the mayors’ top senior staff members, who will attend a four-day session in New York City next month, de Jong said.
Other aspects of the program, whose Harvard home is HKS’ Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, include a research effort to identify innovative solutions to the problems facing cities, the development of case studies to teach leaders how to improve city programs, and an internship program that will dispatch Harvard students to work with the mayors. The mayors also will trade their own expertise, learning from each other.
Mayor Sharon Weston Broome of Baton Rouge, La., attended the New York program because, as a new mayor — she took office in January — she felt it was important to take the opportunity to learn.