By David W. Burns
July 4, 2011

It’s only been a little more than a month since Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel took office, but this past June, the mayor attended his first Annual Meeting, remarking that the event felt like more of a homecoming than an introduction to the Conference of Mayors.

Emanuel, who previously served President Clinton as a Senior Advisor to the President and more recently, for President Obama as his Chief of Staff, addressed his fellow mayors during the Opening Plenary Session. Emanuel took the time to highlight his previous partnerships with the Conference of Mayors, such as the Crime Bill in 1994 along with his ideas for a new infrastructure bank that would help cities fund the big, visionary projects that mayors are anxious to have get off the ground.

“One of my responsibilities that President Clinton asked me to do was lead and usher through the 1994 Crime Act,” said Emanuel. “No other organization was more important in passing that piece of legislation than this one.”

The landmark Crime Bill created the Community Oriented Policing Service (COPS) program, along with the assault weapons ban, and created opportunities for kids to occupy their time with things after school — all things possible due to the mayors’ efforts.

Emanuel then turned focus to his idea for a future partnership with his fellow mayors, in the form of an infrastructure bank.

“I said when I ran for office [as Mayor of Chicago] that I don’t create jobs. I create the condition for jobs to occur. Those conditions are the roads, the bridges, the water system, mass transit, the electrical system,” said Emanuel. “This is one of the longest periods of times where Washington has not renewed a major infrastructure bill.”

To help fill that void, Emanuel’s idea was to create an infrastructure bank, which was included in President Obama’s first budget. The idea behind it would be to establish what the mayor referred to as a “Rebuild America Jobs Account,” which would exist to fund local infrastructure projects that would be funded by the repatriation of corporate profits that are currently going overseas through a lower corporate tax rate.

“This idea, like the crime bill, is to take a few current ideas and put them together to create a new idea,” remarked Emanuel.

Emanuel closed with a commitment to participate in future meetings. “I look forward to coming for the many years ahead and from learning from my colleagues,” he concluded.