The White House Council on Strong Cities, Strong Communities and the Obama administration’s ongoing commitment to federal/local partnership

The White House Council on Strong Cities, Strong Communities and the Obama administration’s ongoing commitment to federal/local partnership

Patrick J Pontius, Executive Director of the White House Council on Strong Cities, Strong Communities, (SC2), standing in front of the Capitol building in Gary, Indiana.

Events in Baltimore and Ferguson have captured the nation’s attention. But these instances of distress certainly aren’t unique to those communities. The systemic challenges associated with a wide array of factors such as racially concentrated poverty, deindustrialization, disinvestment, the lingering aftermath of the recession, and ever-dwindling resources, among others, affect communities of all sizes across our great nation.

Developing sustainable, long-term solutions to these challenges will not be an easy task, but this administration has a track record of success via an approach anchored in changing the way the federal government partners with communities, empowers local decisionmakers, and works across silos to achieve common goals. This approach is the centerpiece of several successful initiatives at the neighborhood level, such as the Promise Zones initiative and the Investing in Manufacturing Communities Partnership, and at the regional level, such as the Sustainable Communities Initiative (part of the Partnership for Sustainable Communities, a collaboration among HUD, the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency that now includes the Economic Development Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture). I am excited to support President Obama’s efforts by taking the helm as the new executive director of one initiative that takes this approach to the municipal level, the White House Council for Strong Cities, Strong Communities (SC2).

SC2 focuses specifically on cities that are experiencing population and job loss, poverty, and other challenges but have strong local leadership and a commitment to implementing a locally driven economic vision in close collaboration with various federal and private-sector partners. I hail from Richmond, Virginia, and started my career in Compton, California, and I am passionate about places that often get overlooked and don’t show up on the usual lists. This is exciting work, and it’s fundamentally about partnership and local vision rather than the federal government telling communities what to do.

I am eager to build on the significant progress made since the president launched SC2 in 2012. Under the leadership of Mark Linton, the outstanding interagency federal team has achieved real results. For example, their work has already enabled SC2 cities to more effectively utilize more than $368 million in existing federal funds and investments. These funds are now strategically assisting local projects targeting economic development, housing, transportation, public safety, and public health, among other areas. These gains have also garnered national recognition such as SC2’s recent selection as a finalist for Harvard University’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation Innovations in American Government Awards competition.

To date, SC2 has partnered with more than 40 cities to cut through bureaucratic red tape, increase capacity, and help communities accomplish locally driven economic development outcomes via: (1) direct deployment of federal SC2 teams on the ground in a 14-city pilot; (2) the SC2 National Resource Network (NRN), which takes the partnership model to scale through high-, medium-, or low-intensity technical assistance engagements; (3) a direct 311 line for cities that promises a 48-hour turnaround time for policy issues; and (4) the Economic Visioning Challenge (EVC), which is underway in three cities. We’ll continue to have teams on the ground in 8 of our cities through late 2016, and we anticipate serving more than 80 cities through the SC2 NRN.

As I sit in the SC2 captain’s chair (thanks to a generous partnership with PD&R), I want to ensure that we maximize the remaining months of this administration by excelling in our existing commitments — our pilot sites, NRN, and the EVC cities — and also in harnessing best practices learned and working with our interagency partners to ensure we operationalize this model beyond 2017. The SC2 team and I look forward to continuing this great work, and we are so thankful to PD&R for providing us with both a home and robust support.