In a week when attention was paid to politics and partisanship on a national level, mayors meeting with President Obama and cabinet officials were preoccupied with concerns closer to home like unemployment and the economy.
It’s not that results from the Senate race in Massachusetts didn’t intrude on last week’s agenda. “Clearly, it created a silent pause,” Charlotte, N.C., Mayor Anthony Foxx told me after he met with local reporters on Saturday. But he said the nearly 300 mayors at the conference were focused on the No. 1 issue everywhere – jobs.
It was the first time at the conference for Foxx, who was elected last November. He said the mayors heard from nine cabinet officials, and he had the chance to talk one-on-one with Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan.
Since the mayor was sworn in Dec. 7, three corporate headquarters have relocated to Charlotte. But with unemployment at 12 percent in the city, Foxx said more has to be done. Foxx said he carried to Washington the same message he repeated during his campaign, that the answer is assistance to small businesses, whether though strengthening loan programs or expanding access to capital from community banks.
“The more we help small business, the more we help grow jobs,” he said.
Foxx said one message to Washington from the mayors was: If you really want to see resources get out quickly, “send more of it through the cities.”
As my colleague Lynn Sweet reported, President Obama previewed the administration’s plans for cities in the new budget to be unveiled next month.
“We’ll build strong regional backbones for our economy by coordinating federal investment in economic and workforce development, because today’s metropolitan areas don’t stop at downtown,” Obama said.
He also named some needs he regarded as basic: “Access to good jobs, affordable housing, convenient transportation that connects both, quality schools and health services, safe streets and parks, and access to a fresh, healthy food supply. ”
While in Washington, Foxx talked with federal officials about infrastructure projects, particularly North Carolina’s bid to win $300 million in competitive stimulus money to reconstruct the Yadkin River bridge, which Foxx called “the worst bridge in North Carolina.” He said cities such as Atlanta and Birmingham, Ala., would suffer if the bridge were out of commission. Foxx said the administration would decide by Feb. 17.
Foxx spoke with Donovan about affordable housing, homelessness and “the impact of federal policies on Charlotte neighborhoods,” particularly the “clustering of poverty” in certain neighborhoods, he said.
Foxx — a Democrat who won in part by following Obama’s successful electoral strategy — is confident the mayors have the administration’s ear. Last year was “the most troubling economic periods of time any generation has seen,” he said. “Things would be a lot worse than they are,” he said, without steps so far undertaken by the president.
U.S. mayors have to be confident that, with everything else on the administration’s mind – starting with the State of the Union speech on Wednesday – cities remain at the top of the federal agenda, he said.