When Barack Obama took office, word went out to every federal agency about New Orleans: dig deep, get creative, and do whatever might be necessary to help the city recover. Unlike his predecessor, the president recognized that a new kind of federalism was required to help New Orleans come back: one that eschewed top-down policies and instead deferred to local priorities while placing a premium on competence and flexibility across the federal government.
How did agencies translate the president's vision?
For starters, many cabinet secretaries adopted New Orleans as their second home. They also focused on a range of innovative programs to assist. From efforts to help rebuild the public school system (over $100 million invested in Katrina-affected areas in the city and state since 2009) to the billions in community development block grant assistance that helped turn around high-need neighborhoods, to the initiative I ran, Strong Cities, Strong Communities, which embedded a team of federal experts in city hall, the administration demonstrated a commitment to working with local partners to bust bureaucracy and forge creative solutions to big problems.
When Mayor Mitch Landrieu needed to complete a streetcar project in time for the 2013 Super Bowl, the U.S. Department of Transportation sent in their best to help ensure the city reaped the economic benefits of having smart transit options in place before kickoff. And when the city wanted to launch a $52 million mortgage program, the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development teamed up to slash red tape, resulting in over 300 residents becoming first-time homeowners. HUD has also nearly doubled its Housing Choice Voucher Program - to more than 17,000 households in New Orleans - since Katrina hit.
The administration's efforts to recover from the failures of the previous administration in New Orleans represent one of several formative partnerships with cities facing crises that, taken together, have recommitted the federal government to a progressive urban policy agenda that heretofore had been lacking.
When a natural disaster like Katrina or a man-made economic disaster like Detroit's bankruptcy hits, it's easy to focus on the failings of the public sector. But the untold story is the successful playbook that mayors and federal officials in the Obama Administration have written together to help cities anticipate and address a range of shocks - economic, long-term blight and decline, natural disasters like Katrina or Hurricane Sandy, and mitigating the worst effects of climate change to create more resilient, livable cities. What principles guide this new playbook?
First, local priorities and a local vision have to drive policy, and it can often be improved by absorbing the lessons and innovations from other cities that have succeeded - or failed.
Second, when committed, competent federal employees are empowered to adopt a collaborative problem solving approach as opposed to a compliance role with local partners, bureaucracy can and often does melt away - and flexible solutions present themselves.
Local leaders including mayors like Mitch Landrieu or Mike Duggan would probably tell you about the many ongoing headaches they face in dealing with the federal bureaucracy. But they would also stop to note just how responsive, flexible and focused federal officials have been over the last six years when it mattered the most. This in turn has helped set the stage for critical private investment and novel private-public partnerships with businesses and philanthropy alike. Take a drive along the M1 Corridor in Detroit if you want to see evidence of this firsthand.
Future administrations - federal and mayoral - would do well to apply the lessons of this administration's work with cities, regardless of partisan ideology. In this season of presidential primary posturing, it's worth remembering that hostile rhetoric about the federal government (or worse, about talented federal employees) can have direct consequences for places like New Orleans and Detroit.
Candidates who paint the whole of government as wasteful and inefficient deserve extra scrutiny, especially from the 80% of Americans who live in cities. Pledges by Senator Ted Cruz to shutter entire cabinet agencies or by former Governor Jeb Bush to only hire one new employee for every three that retire from federal service, will lead to predictable and dire results down the road. You can't at once disdain the government you hope to lead and then expect it will have the talent and resources necessary to spring into action the next time a great American city needs it the most.
Instead, when the next Katrina hits - be it a hurricane or a recession - future administrations should turn to the excellent playbook that has already been written.