Megan Cardiff
August 1, 2011

Conference of Mayors members from across the nation participated in a panel discussion “Creating Jobs in America’s Cities,” held July 23 during the two-day Leadership Meeting in Los Angeles hosted by U.S. Conference of Mayors President Los Angeles Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa. The panel was moderated by Don Graves, Executive Director of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Small Business, Community Development and Housing Policy at the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

The President created the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness to acquire direct feedback from individuals across the country regarding ways to make changes that help get people back to work. “There is no magic bullet. There is no single job plan that will get us out of the predicament we’ve been in. It will take a lot of hard work, a lot of small projects and ideas that we’ve put together and that we act upon to actually make a difference for the country and get folks employed and working in your communities,” said Graves. There are several different initiatives the Council is focusing on, such as the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative, Promise Neighborhoods, and Neighborhood Revitalization grants, and they need the assistance of mayors to help determine what can be done to help put people in America’s cities into jobs and get the economy going again.

Council Member Dr. Laura D’Andrea Tyson, S.K. and Angela Chan Professor of Global Management at the Haas School of Business at the University of California Berkley, emphasized the goal of the Council from the beginning has been to find areas where something can be done relatively quickly without a very dramatic infusion of funds. The Better Buildings Initiative is an early agenda item that is an example of this. The Better Buildings Initiative, which started as a contest in the beginning of this year, currently has commitments from various companies and cities to make commercial buildings 20 percent more energy efficient over the next decade. The initiative focuses on establishing public-private partnerships, looking for ways to leverage public funds with private funds to get things done.

“There is a clear mismatch between skills of the 21st century with the job training programs today and we need to align that. Community colleges in particular play a vital role in terms of aligning the employers needs with the training programs so that there is a certification or credentialing that comes out of the community colleges that allows for a set of standards in terms of job readiness in any particular sector,” stated Monica Lozano, member of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness and Chief Executive Officer of impreMedia. Lozano talked about the Skills for America’s Future, an initiative that is financed by the private sector and convenes the business sector with community colleges to ensure the curriculum matches the needs of the community colleges.

The initiative sets out to match the labor force with the needs of the 21st century economy, makes sure credentialing fits those needs, identifies excellence in existing training programs, fosters cross-sector collaboration, and makes sure the economy continues to be competitive. The manufacturing sector has seen the greatest amount of job creation and is an area where the required skills can be aligned with needs and job creation accelerated. An example is Los Angeles’s Auto Technician Program, which aligned curriculum in local community colleges and the needs of the auto dealers, with the help of Villaraigosa’s office.

Quallion President Paul Beach talked about the significant role local governments play in developing and advancing small businesses in their communities. Beach, like many other small businesses executives, finds the disconnect between a small business and major government stakeholders challenging. “Mayors are in the trenches with small businesses owners and are able to help make those linkages through concierge offices that help the small businesses grow,” he said.

City National Bank Chairman and CEO Russell Goldsmith spoke to the mayors about the importance of leveraging public-private partnerships from the prospective of a major financial institution. “First, in cities there has to be a recognition that you need more than words to grow jobs. This is not a pro-business project, it’s a pro-America project,” Goldsmith stated. He emphasized that as a mayor you must identify the strengths in your community and build on those in order to retain and foster jobs in key industries within your city. The most difficult component of this process is the follow-through. Having a full-time leader that focuses on creating, retaining, and building jobs and who has direct access to the mayor is vital to building a coalition of political support.