What's New

 

Dozens of elected officials launch Local Progress, the first national municipal policy network dedicated to advancing innovative legislative strategies in America's cities and towns

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Building on their recent electoral victories, 37 progressive elected officials from 32 municipalities around the country united last weekend to launch Local Progress, a network of leaders dedicated to promoting "broadly-shared prosperity, equal justice under law, sustainable and livable cities, and good government that serves the public interest effectively."

The gathering kicked off with a rousing address from Mary Kay Henry, President of the Service Employees International Union, who said that SEIU is committed to building robust progressive infrastructure at the state and local level because it is crucial to improving the lives of working families. "We're building a movement for a more fair and just society," said Nick Licata, the Seattle City Councilmember who is chairing the network. "And we're off to an amazing start."

Local Progress will facilitate sharing and development of policy innovations, local legislation, organizing strategies, and communication tools. It will also help progressive advocacy organizations and elected officials collaborate on policy work in cities around the country and elevate issues into the national dialogue.

"After decades of rising inequality, rebuilding America requires smart and sustained communication and coordination between progressive advocacy groups and elected leaders," said Nisha Agarwal, deputy director of the Center for Popular Democracy, which is a founding partner of Local Progress. "It's crucial that we share innovative municipal policies and collaborate to realize our goals of equity, opportunity, and inclusion." Cities are the driving force of America's economic engine: the top 100 metropolitan areas account for about 75 percent of the nation's gross domestic product; the top ten cities have an economic output that is about equal to that of 35 states.

"We have deep relationships with leaders in cities around the country," said Gloria Totten, president of the Public Leadership Institute, also a founding partner of the new network. "And we're bringing them together through Local Progress to share their best practices and unite behind a progressive agenda for our country."

On Saturday morning, participants and outside experts discussed ways to rejuvenate the economy through the creation of good, middle class jobs. "We had lively presentations about how cities can foster smart economic growth," said Wilson Goode Jr., the Philadelphia City Councilman who led the conversation.  "Everyone agreed that we have to build an economy where workers are paid a living wage with adequate benefits, sick leave, and the security they need to support their families."

The legislators spoke optimistically about their vision for the coming decades. "A broad coalition of voters sent a powerful message on election day," said Faith Winter, Mayor Pro Tem of Westminster, CO. "Voters want government that works in the public interest - not just the interest of multinational corporations - and that treats everyone with the respect and dignity they deserve."

The attendees said they planned to continue push forward aggressively on coordinated legislative campaigns in the months and years ahead. Priorities include making government services more accessible for immigrants, creating middle-class green jobs and vibrant livable neighborhoods, empowering community residents to participate in democratic budgeting decisions, and supporting parents by strengthening schools and making work rules more flexible.

The Founding Board of Local Progress is

Wilson Goode Jr., Philadelphia (PA) City Council: (215) 686-3414

Brad Lander, New York (NY) City Council: (718) 499-1090

Chuck Lesnick, Yonkers (NY) City Council: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ; (914) 377-6060

Nick Licata, Seattle (WA) City Council: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ; (206) 684-8803

Joe Moore, Chicago (IL) City Council: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ; (773) 338-5796

Julia Ross, St. Louis Park (MN) City Council: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Faith Winter, Westminster (CO) City Council: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ; (303) 594-5594

and includes two core partner non-profit advocacy organizations: the Public Leadership Institute and the Center for Popular Democracy (www.populardemocracy.org).

This article was written by the heads of the following organizations: Scott Bernstein of the Center for Neighborhood Technology, Kimberly Freeman Brown of Green For All, David A. Foster of the BlueGreen Alliance, Phillip Henderson of the Surdna Foundation, and Mindy Lubber of Ceres.  It is published as an editorial in the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Superstorm Sandy and the subsequent nor'easter laid bare the precarious state of the physical systems that make our cities and towns tick-our infrastructure.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York declared what we have long known: America faces "a new reality when it comes to these weather patterns. We have an old infrastructure and we have old systems, and that is not a good combination."

Those who lived for a week or more without electricity, water, or transportation in the aftermath of Sandy instantly understood the fragility of our physical systems. But now it's up to foundations and nonprofits to make the link for voters, policy makers, businesses, and others about the part we all need to play in rebuilding better. A meaningful recovery requires us to push a vision of next-generation infrastructure that improves the nation's transit systems, makes buildings more energy-efficient, better manages water systems, and improves our food system.

If philanthropy does its job well in pushing for a next-generation system, it could play a big role in creating millions of new, steady jobs, revitalizing the economy, and rebuilding communities so they work better for everyone, not just the affluent.

Read more...

The National Domestic Workers Alliance has released a report on the state of domestic workers in the United States.  "Home Economics: The Invisible and Unregulated World of Domestic Work" is the first report of its kind in the country. The research was conducted in collaboration with the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois in Chicago and DataCenter.

Among other sobering findings, the report reveals that:

• 23 percent of workers surveyed are paid below the state minimum wage.
• Domestic workers earn a median hourly wage of $10 an hour.

As journalist Barbara Ehrenreich writes in her introduction, the report's findings are a call to action, not only for domestic workers and employers, but for our nation as whole:

The best way to bring an end to the abuses documented in this report is to go beyond appeals to individual conscience and codify the rights of domestic workers in contracts and law. As a start, we must insist on the inclusion of domestic workers under the coverage of existing labor laws.

The challenge posed by Home Economics: The Invisible and Unregulated World of Domestic Work goes beyond the immediate community of employers. Anyone who reads this report will be forced to reflect on the larger consequences of extreme inequality, which are moral as well as economic. As we should have learned from the crisis that brought on a global downturn, inequality threatens economic stability. . . . Home Economics offers a way out of this shameful situation, a clear course of action toward a society in which everyone's work is respected and valued.

You can read the executive summary or download the full report here.

 

The National Skills Coalition (NSC), a Surdna grantee, released a report, Building Pathways to Employment in America’s Cities through Integrated Workforce and Community Development, which explores ways that federal policy can better support cities’ efforts to integrate human and physical capital investments, particularly in the areas of public housing and transit oriented development.  The report is the result of a collaboration between NSC and local leaders in five cities—Baltimore, Chicago, New Orleans, Twin Cities, and Seattle—who are working to bridge the worlds of community and workforce development locally.

Despite growing interest in building these bridges, it has been challenging for local community development and workforce development practitioners to collaborate, even as both know that coordination is essential for improving the skills and employability of low-income individuals and for more efficiently using limited public resources. Federal Policy has a role to play in making this type of coordination easier.

America’s cities have the potential to be the engines of full national economic recovery and growth. Realizing this potential requires integrated investments not only in places, but also in people.

Read the report...

Surdna grantee Reconnecting America released Are We There Yet? Creating Complete Communities for 21st Century America, an ambitious report that tracks progress in America's regions toward a vision of complete communities.

The report highlights the benefits that complete communities offer all Americans, tells stories about the work being done across the country to create complete communities, and measures progress in every region with a population above 55,000.

Click here for more information...

Excerpt from an article published in the Investor Circle's "In the Loop."

by Phillip Henderson, President, Surdna Foundation, and Michelle Knapik, Director of Sustainable Environements, Surdna Foundation
September 25, 2012

The Surdna Foundation is determined to go deeper in our mission to build just and sustainable communities and we are directing our environmental focus to bedrock systems:  the infrastructure that connects people to jobs and services and through which we manage water, energy, food and other critical resources.

The factors that drove this decision are abundantly clear throughout America’s metropolitan areas, most starkly in our older cities, and they are worth spelling out in shorthand: 1) much of the infrastructure on which this country depends for its economic growth and prosperity is decades old and nearing the end of its life; 2) the government funding available for renewing, replacing, or reinventing these systems is severely constrained and cannot (alone) meet the urgent needs in our nation’s urban areas; 3) extreme weather events and climate change are putting stress on fragile and aging systems; and 4) growing populations and shifting demographics place issues of equity, affordability and access to high quality infrastructure and services at the core of any new investments.

If we want infrastructure that improves transit systems, makes buildings more energy efficient, better manages our water systems and rebuilds regional food systems, and we believe in solutions that can connect these four systems and improve them in ways that maximize impact and minimize negative environmental consequences (all Surdna tenets), we will need to support the pathways from here to there.  Philanthropy cannot fill the gaps left by the sharp declines in public spending, but we can help with creative solutions to this deep financing hole we find ourselves in.

Read the full article...

by Michelle Knapik
Director, Sustainable Environments Program, Surdna Foundation
September 18, 2012

Photo from BlueGreen Alliance report, Green Manufacturing Action Plan (GreenMAP)

Over the next decades we should be able to fill the hundreds of billions in new transit, rail, and street car orders that are on the books in cities across the US in ways that create thousands of new, high quality jobs (Reconnecting America estimates that there are 413 projects valued at more than $230 billion).  This opportunity should also revive US transportation supply chain manufacturing in some of the economically hardest hit regions in the country - the same places that in the 1930s produced and serviced the fastest, sleekest such transit vehicles of the times.  The challenge is that key connectors in the transportation supply chain have been weakened, and in many cases have gone missing with foreign manufacturers quickly filling the void.  Without efforts to reestablish these supply chain connections, we will miss regional opportunities for the US to once again compete in transportation manufacturing.

But before we get to the supply chain question, we need to reexamine how transportation vehicles and equipment are purchased. Despite living in a consumer savvy country, our cities - the main purchasers of transportation vehicles, are mired in archaic buying practices and slow-moving reform efforts. Cities "procure" things through public bids and many cities are required to accept the lowest bid for goods and services.  Most of us have had the experience of sacrificing high return when we buy goods and services at the cheapest price, so thankfully, some reform efforts have enabled cities to replace low cost bids with "best value procurement." Best value enables cities to factor in provisions like experience, past performance, vehicle design, delivery schedule, and energy consumption so they can get the best value at the lowest cost.

Going one step further, Surdna Foundation grantees the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) and the Brookings Institution are organizing an effort to fast track new "best value transportation procurement" changes that will enable cities to consider the job creation and regional manufacturing benefits of their transportation purchases. In addition to boosting demand for vehicles and component parts that are produced in America, this initiative is also focused on high quality transit manufacturing jobs that when combined will help the public get the best value per tax dollar invested.

Getting this best value procurement initiative up the proverbial hill requires the development of a model bid process for cities to follow, along with research to fill data gaps and technical support that will enable cities to properly assess bid responses to the jobs and manufacturing questions. The few previous attempts by cities to do this have had mixed results.  But it is hard to fault the transit authorities because they were basically handed a bundle of new considerations without, an evaluation roadmap.  I liken it to assembling a dresser from IKEA without the diagrams or instructions -- good luck having it come out right!

Brookings' Rob Puentes hosts panel with transit manufacturers (Photo by Shawn Escoffery)

With a plan for improving links between cities' transportation purchases and an assessment of regional jobs underway, let's return to the need for the US to stitch back together the transportation manufacturing supply chain. This includes not just the big ticket production of train, bus, street car and related vehicle shells, but everything that goes in them, from gears to seat covers.  Here's where we run into a chicken and egg situation that goes like this: many small US manufacturers produce items that can be included in this supply chain, but until these manufacturers are sure that transportation purchases will build back the US supply chain they do not want to assume the risk of jumping in. But until the US supply chain is in place, purchasers will continue to have trouble meeting Buy America requirements for transportation equipment.  So instead of a system that supports a US manufacturing pipeline, buyers resort to the escape hatch in the Buy America requirements that says, in essence, if you can't fairly easily source a component that is made in America, you can purchase it from overseas.

A number of savvy government, nonprofit, business and academic leaders are working to solve this dilemma.  For example, Surdna grantees the Environmental Law and Policy Center and The BlueGreen Alliance have been surveying, identifying and mapping potential supply chain manufacturers in various regions of the country.  If we add a well mapped supply chain with a best value procurement process that includes transit manufacturing and jobs factors, we may be able to position America to reclaim a top transit manufacturing status.

Under the leadership of LAANE and Brookings, transportation advocates from various corners of the country will work on model best value bids standards and develop the technical assistance packages to support transit authorities in a few upcoming transit vehicle and rail car orders.  The demand trend for public transit is growing and the need for jobs and an expanded manufacturing base is immediate.  As this plan leaves that station, the question is whether all the signal switches will align so the little red engine's momentum can build until it reaches its US employment destination. Surdna is laying bets (via philanthropic dollars) behind this effort - and we are seeking other investors and riders.

The Surdna Foundation seeks an Executive Director for the Andrus Family Fund (AFF) and the Andrus Family Philanthropy Program (AFPP). Reporting to the President & CEO of the Surdna Foundation, and working in close partnership with the AFF Board of Directors, the Executive Director will focus primarily on the work of AFF and its $3-4 million in annual grantmaking. The Executive Director will also oversee and continue to develop other Andrus Family Philanthropy  programs that seek to engage the more than 400 extended family members, especially those in the fifth and sixth generation, in philanthropy and public service.

Click here for complete details and information about how to apply...

We are pleased to share some exciting news with you:  The Surdna Foundation is expanding its program team. We are seeking three new Program Officers to join the Foundation.

Created by John E. Andrus in 1917, the Surdna Foundation is a family foundation based in Manhattan. The Foundation seeks to foster just and sustainable communities in the United States - communities guided by principles of social justice and distinguished by healthy and sustainable environments, strong local economies, and thriving cultures.

Surdna recently embarked on an important effort to refine our mission and priorities.  Among our new goals, we seek to clearly articulate our strategies and use communication effectively to support them. We are also embracing our role as a learning organization - consistently assessing the results of our work, gathering important learning, and sharing these lessons.  Above all, we seek to have a greater impact in fostering sustainable and just communities.

To achieve these ambitious goals, we have created three new program officer positions to strengthen the capacity of our program team.  Each of Surdna's grantmaking programs - Sustainable Environments, Strong Local Economies, and Thriving Cultures - currently seeks to add one new Program Officer.  This is an important period of change for Surdna and an exciting time to join the Foundation.

The Surdna Foundation has retained Gumbs + Partners, an executive search firm, to conduct the searches for these three new staff members.  For job descriptions and information about how to apply, please click below.

See job descriptions for:

• Program Officer, Sustainable Environments
• Program Officer, Strong Local Economies
• Program Officer, Thriving Cultures
  

 

Introduction by Phil Henderson, President, Surdna Foundation

Twenty-five years ago, Surdna worked with partners to help launch the smart growth movement.  Today, the Foundation remains committed to creating just and sustainable communities where a high quality of life is available to more people because they are surrounded by economic opportunity and a city built to enrich lives.

That is why we invest in innovative yet pragmatic solutions that make our country's transportation system affordable, sustainable and efficient. We support efforts to make sure our transportation network does a better job getting all people where they need and want to go, in the way they want to get there. A well thought out transportation system doesn't cut people off from economic opportunity, but makes prosperity possible for more people, especially those historically shut out.

The federal government is responsible for building and maintaining a healthy transportation infrastructure. At the same time, philanthropy can - and Surdna does - support organizations that advocate for transportation infrastructure policies that create and increase access to jobs, reduce pollution and give people affordable, convenient and reliable options to get to and from work, school and home.

We hoped Congress would pass a transportation bill that achieves more of what America expects and deserves. Unfortunately, after more than 1,000 days had passed since the last transportation bill expired, Congress voted on a bill, MAP21, that represents a step backwards.  The bill dedicates little money to repairing and preserving our roads and bridges, slashes the money available to make our roads safer and reduces people's input and control over major projects that affect their communities.

Following, we are pleased to share the insights of two of our grantees --- Geoff Anderson, the President and CEO of Smart Growth America, and Laura Barrett, the Executive Director of the Transportation Equity Network and the National Policy Director for Gamaliel/Transportation Equity Network -- on MAP21 and its shortfall.

I applaud our grantee efforts and those of their partners in the field to improve our transportation system. Our team at Surdna will continue to work closely with the field to foster high impact innovation at the local and state level so that in two years, when Congress votes on the next transportation bill, we can tell compelling stories of how mayors, planners, community groups and concerned residents are implementing smart growth strategies to build thriving communities.

---

Snatched from the jaws of victory, MAP-21 misses the chance to meet 21^st century needs

by Geoff Anderson, President and CEO of Smart Growth America

During the nearly three years that Congress dithered on updating our national investment plan for transportation, we in the Transportation for America coalition met with and surveyed thousands of Americans, in every region, to hear their needs and desires.  A while back, I summed up what we heard this way:

"If Americans themselves were crafting the transportation bill, we would see a doubling of share for public transportation; an ironclad system of accountability for restoring existing roads and bridges, before simply building more of them; and a strong commitment to making our streets safe enough for kids to bicycle to school, or so seniors can walk to a nearby restaurant or the drug store."

I'm sad to say that Congress has failed and taken a step back on all of these aims in MAP-21, the recently reauthorized Transportation Bill. The frustrating thing is that we were so close until the very last minute.

Read full commentary...

---

The New Transportation Bill:  A View from the Community Level

by Laura Barrett, National Policy Director for Gamaliel /Transportation Equity Network

Up until this point, every transportation reauthorization bill in the past two decades has contained significant improvements in government accountability and transparency, community participation, environmental justice, job access and training, and civil rights protections. But under the recently adopted Transportation Bill, entitled "Moving Ahead for Progress" (MAP-21), Congress took three giant steps backward in supporting quality of life in our communities.  The three areas in which we will not move ahead include:

• Local public involvement - there will be less involvement in some decisions about highway and transportation projects in our communities.
• Safe, accessible sidewalks and bike paths will have significantly less funding and the "Safe Routes to School" programhas been stripped away.
• Transit - the transit funding crisisin major metropolitan communities was overlooked.

Read full commentary...