Denver Mayor Wellington Webb assumed the presidency of the United States Conference of Mayors at its annual meeting in New Orleans, June 11-15, by telling his colleagues that the American people have a renewed confidence in them and a "well-founded faith in local solutions to local challenges."

The mayor went on to outlined a new urban agenda that will emphasize smart growth, community development for distressed neighborhoods, and investing in America’s working families.

In calling for a new and historic agenda between the nation’s cities, state capitols and federal government, Webb told the gathering of over 300 mayors that they must continue to distinguish themselves as reformers and as leaders of the new economy, and run their cities like private businesses with a public mission.

The mayor called on the Conference to sharpen its image as it enters the 2000 presidential election year in an effort to get the candidates of both parties to address real urban issues. Instead of mayors holding out an old image of a "tin cup and extended palm asking for handouts to sustain and expand cumbersome bureaucracies," Webb characterized the new breed of mayor as calling for resources, flexibility and carefully thought out incentives to promote economic empowerment, create wealth and link citizens within metropolitan economies.

Webb challenged the mayors to play a bigger role in national economic policy and renewed the group’s commitment to "embrace competition and the efficiencies of the marketplace in the expenditure of our public dollars."

Webb’s three-pronged agenda is designed to serve as the starting point of a national dialogue on how the federal and state governments can better respond to local issues that affect, in Webb’s words, "all the American people."

Smart Growth and Regional Cooperation

Acknowledging that transportation funding impacts development patterns, Webb called for a right-to-know provision in the nation’s transportation policy that would require metropolitan planning organizations to disclose where their investments are made. "We require banks to tell us where they lend money; we should hold our transportation bureaucracies to the same standard," he said.

He also chided the federal government for not enforcing TEA-21 provisions that require MPOs to emphasize repair and investment in their spending patterns versus new construction.

On regional cooperation, the mayor called for more regional approaches to housing and labor markets, saying that the current system of housing vouchers and public housing authorities do not reflect the new economic reality of metropolitan regions. He said that low income families should have the right to exercise their choices in a metropolitan housing market.

Similarly, Webb indicated that many people in cities want to work, but find it difficult to be linked to jobs in suburban areas.

The mayors will also explore under Webb’s leadership the creation of smarter tax policy to revitalize older neighborhoods and to relieve development pressure on rural communities. The group will consider a targeted, first-time homebuyer tax credit, similar to the one enacted recently for the District of Columbia, a historic homeownership tax credit touted by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and tax incentives for landowners to promote open space and provide alternatives to sale and subdivision.

Promoting Our Cities’ Competitive Assets

Webb called on Congress and mayors to save the Community Reinvestment Act and to strongly oppose proposals to weaken the law. The CRA requires banks to lend in low-income neighborhoods to ensure market capital for housing and urban development.

The mayor’s proposal includes creation of a flexible community tax initiative that gives cities a specific amount of federal tax incentives to be used for community or job training development tailored to the specific needs of its neighborhoods. And the mayor pledged to build on the Conference’s successful brownfield redevelopment initiative by calling for increased investment in the acquisition, cleanup and reuse of vacant land in older communities.

Investing in Working Families

Webb promised to focus discussion of election year politics on working families. He said that it is a "fundamental principle of this nation that work will pay." But he added that millions go to work without enjoying a decent standard of living. To address this deficit, Webb chastised many states that have failed to adequately promote federal benefits, such as the Children’s Health Insurance Program, to working families.

Only eleven percent of the $8.4 billion allocated over the past two years has been spent under the program.

The mayors will also push to extend welfare reform by pushing the states to do a better job of meeting the needs of city residents. Webb said that the federal government should be more creative in rewarding innovative states, disclose more information on urban caseloads, simplify TANF regulations and do a better job of publicizing TANF rules that give flexibility in how funds are spent.

Their proposal will also called for an overhaul of the nation’s fragmented system of childcare and to eliminate "perverse disincentives that slash childcare assistance for low-income families who move from welfare to work or that deny assistance to the working poor who never went on welfare."

Webb said the Conference would partner with other organizations to help push a new urban agenda, including the Brookings Center, the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, the Social Compact, the National Urban League, and the Progressive Policy Institute.