Posts about Vincent Gray

In March, Mayor Gray's proposed budget included $84 million in revenue from speeding tickets, cuts to many human services and affordable housing programs, and a "priority restoration list." Top on the list are homeless shelters, youth mental health services, and the Housing Production Trust Fund.

The latest budget is the second year the Housing Production Trust Fund has had the majority of its funding used for other programs, with a commitment that it would be a priority for restoration. Of the $38 million removed in the last two years, however, the District has only restored $2 million.

Spending money first on lowering speeding tickets runs counter to the Mayor's and Council's own commitments to fund key programs with the first available resources. The Mayor and Council agreed to the list during budget negotiations. This allowed residents directly see the trade-offs between programs, and represented as a set of promises to residents about how it would spend extra revenue.

The Mayor and Council want to act quickly to respond to the public concern over the cost of traffic violations, but they have dragged their feet finding funding to restore the Housing Production Trust Fund and funding the other critical areas. They should not speed to a resolution, without looking at the other impacts this choice would bring to many people in the District of Columbia.

On retail, for example, the report says that "Most interviewees stated that the District has great potential to become a model for the future: a vibrant and walkable city. The majority said traffic congestion will become less relevant to the retail sector in the future." (page 78)

This is a refreshing change from the tired trope from the economic development transition team, which we still hear today from some business groups, who say that one of the most important steps they want DC to take is to time all of the traffic lights to make streets high-speed for cars into the District in the morning and out at night.

Plan is sector-specific

Some jurisdictions try to build jobs by indiscriminately throwing money at any company in any sector that is willing to come into town for a tax break. It's far more effective to develop clusters of related companies. That makes the city a generally attractive place for someone in that field, and the strong supply of labor in the field then attracts employers in a mutually-reinforcing cycle.

This plan seriously analyses key clusters that DC can reasonably hope to developed: technology, hospitality and retail, professional services and government contracting, real estate and construction, higher education, and health care. It lays out strategies for each that consider the particular needs of that sector. We commended Gray's emphasis on sector-specific economic development in an article earlier this year.

For example, this plan envisions a world-class medical center at the McMillan Sand Filtration Site, which is right next to a cluster of hospitals. The job growth in health care and higher education has exceeded all other sectors in DC in the past decade.

Here are some of the many recommendations which jumped out:

Build a tech hub at Saint Elizabeths. The plan calls for creating a technology center at the Saint Elizabet's campus. It also recommends finding ways to offer tech startups lower-cost office space and connecting tech entrepreneurs with established leaders in their sector. These are all recommendations from the letter from tech executives, which we organized with InTheCapital.

Strategically relax height restrictions. While Mayor Gray emphasized at today's press conference that he's not counting on any changes to federal law, the plan contemplates raising height limits near the Anacostia River. This is similar to Paris's approach to their height limit, and is a good compromise between the economic value of more growth and federal aesthetic concerns.

Change zoning to allow retail in more areas. Commercial space in most parts of the District is very limited. This makes retail space more expensive and contributes to "retail leakage" to the suburbs, which is where many residents leave the District to spend their shopping dollars.

The plan calls for expanding the supply of low-cost retail space while respecting residential impacts and allowing residents to walk for as many of their shopping needs as possible. In particular, it suggests making retail more continuous along commercial corridors. When there are gaps of residential zoning, especially at prominent corners, it stops many shoppers from continuing along the street.

Promote hospitality and tourism. The proposal for the hospitality sector is particularly thoughtful and detailed. The plan envisions "delivering the highest standards in hospitality and service," creating a Hospitality Program at DC Community College, setting up a culinary incubator, and expanding tourism. These will all grow service sector jobs, and good service sector jobs are one of the best paths to the middle class in today's economy.

On the other hand, a few elements of the plan miss the mark or could go farther.

No new workforce development initiatives. Who will fill these 100,000 new jobs? Only 27% of DC jobs go to by DC residents, so adding more jobs won't address the unemployment rate east of the Anacostia river, which is one of the plan's stated goals. There isn't much in the way of new workforce programs beyond the administration's existing initiatives, One City One Hire and the Workforce Intermediary.

The only new initiative in the plan is to post new university and health care jobs on the DOES web site. What the District needs to do is use data-driven methods to steer the $100 million that DC spends on job training where it will do the most good, at training providers that produce validated results.

Tech tax incentives still lack focus. The report continues to promote Gray's plan for broad tax breaks for tech investment. An incentive for new angel investors in technology is a good idea, but any tax break needs to specifically target the District's goals of building a strong base of tech firms that actually create new technology and workers with software development and other skills.

DMPED could work with all stakeholders to properly design this tax break, but instead is choosing to shut out discussions of how to best tailor it. On LivingSocial's $32 million tax break, DMPED and LivingSocial mutually agreed not to negotiate on any terms ahead of time, the Washington City Paper learned.

The mayor wants to pass a tax break for tech investors, which the Council removed from a recent bill. DMPED refused to negotiate with opponents on that bill as well. That left the tax break's primary Council advocate, David Catania, bewildered that there was no discussion of a smaller reduction, which he would have gladly agreed to.

If DMPED can seriously think about what it needs to achieve and tailor the break to those goals with a spirit of collaboration, instead of letting tech executives and investors design their own tax cuts, it should be able to devise something that can win broad support.

Hospitality job growth significantly underestimated. Hospitality jobs are the 2nd fastest growing job segment in the District, having grown at a 28% clip and added 14,200 new jobs in the past 10 years. But they are only a small fragment of the 100,000 new jobs projected in the plan, which forecasts only an 8% growth in hospitality jobs from 2008 to 2018.

That disconnect resulted from the misuse of DOES labor market data by the report's authors, according to DOES Chief Economist Dr James Moore. The labor market data and projections used by the report's authors are not meant for economic development analysis, as they fail to factor many drivers of job growth and thus understate job growth.

This plan includes some of the best initiatives for improving hospitality jobs and workforce readiness in the nation, but it must be grounded in accurate data on job growth in the sector and its sub-sectors.

There's much more in the 116-page document. It shows that, as with the sustainability strategy, one legacy of the Gray administration will be a set of excellent plans that can guide the District through the rest of his mayoralty and beyond.

Gray said he will use some of the money to hire 100 new police officers. That's fine, though if the police officers don't focus on traffic, then it ultimately is just using camera revenue for things other than road safety.

We need to do more for traffic safety. DC is adding a few cameras which will make a big impact, but there's a lot of dangerous driving out there. A few cameras with high fines will stem a little bit of it and raise a bunch of money. I want to see us stem a lot more of it, and the only realistic way to do that is to expand the cameras significantly.

A major element of the Wells-Cheh bill is a provision that some camera revenue goes into a fund the Metropolitan Police Department can use to buy more cameras. Regardless of the level of fines, it's critical to set up a system whereby the stock of cameras can automatically grow over time.

It's also critical to ensure that the political blowback from speed cameras doesn't stop the District government from adding more. Now, it's not clear what exactly is necessary to achieve this. If Gray had 3-4 more years on his mayoralty, there might be little need to change the fines. Gray shows no interest in curtailing the plan whatsoever, regardless of fines, and in fact is resistant to lowering fines.

The DC Council might have disapproved some contracts for new cameras, but it couldn't. The next year's budget counts on a lot of revenue from cameras, which means that if councilmembers had wanted to delete the cameras, they would have had to fill a big budget hole.

What about in the future? If Gray doesn't run for reelection, as most speculate he won't, then the next mayor might have a different view. Maybe the next mayor will be so hostile to cameras that it won't matter how high or low the fines are. Or maybe he or she will keep cameras going no matter what.

From a safety point of view, fines don't need to be high as long as it's having a deterrent effect. At the press conference, Police Chief Cathy Lanier said she doesn't believe $50 fines are enough to deter, but council staff could find no studies that showed any conclusive correlation between fine size and driving behavior.

That suggest that high fines don't really improve safety. On the other hand, it also means that lowering fines probably won't do anything for safety either—unless lowering fines changes the political dynamic and allows more cameras.

It's not clear it will. AAA's John Townsend participated in the task force, and said in the meetings that AAA would support cameras as long as they're not for revenue. But then, last week AAA still came out with a provcative study of how many dollars certain cameras brought in, and got a raft of sympathetic stories in the press.

From a purely abstract point of view, lowering fines is the right thing to do. Punishments should be high enough to deter lawbreaking, but don't need to be higher just to punish. A lot of people believe, despite academic evidence to the contrary, that cranking up punishments fights crime or unsafe driving; past a certain point, it doesn't.

From a political point of view, on the other hand, it's worth doing this right thing if it achieves a greater goal. Expanding cameras, and making streets safer, should be that goal. If the bill sets aside a fund for MPD to buy more cameras, that could significantly streamline the process.

If lowering fines blunts political blowback, that's worth a lot. However, if speeders still complain, and AAA's Townsend will continue to say anything to get attention in the press regardless of lower fines, then lower fines would just give dangerous lawbreakers a windfall for little benefit.

These goals seem lofty, and it's good to set aggressive goals. At companies I've worked, employees and managers regularly set and reviewed goals for each employee and division. The better places pushed everyone to set "stretch goals," ones which take some extra effort to meet. Managers shouldn't expect employees to achieve every piece of every goal; if they do, the goals are probably too conservative. But if they meet none, the goals are too tough or the employee not performing.

With education, no kids should fall short of proficiency or drop out, and almost everyone needs a college degree or vocational certification to get jobs in the modern economy. But we know that not everyone will. Nevertheless, it's critical that leaders aim high and push hard to get there.

The report cites a study by IFF on improving schools, which many, including Steve Glazerman, have criticized as fatally flawed. District education officials can give parents and potential parents the greatest confidence in the schools' future by moving beyond that study soon and finding better metrics for judging the performance of schools.

Transportation

The transportation section lays out some meaningful priorities but also sets a much lower bar. Its objectives:

• 84 new Capital Bikeshare stations in 2012
  
• 5 new miles of bike lanes by 2014
  
• Opening the first streetcar line in 2013

These are all extremely important priorities, but they just recite what DDOT is already doing in the short term, not stretch for the future.

Opening the streetcar line is a "stretch goal" on its own for DDOT, since there's still a lot to do to open the line by 2013—especially if "opening" the line means having enough cars to run a reasonable headway. Many people, including Councilmember Tommy Wells, fear that they will end up starting up the line with only 3 cars, force riders to wait too long, and give the streetcar an early reputation for uselessness. It would be nice if this goal mentioned the headways.

The other goals are more conservative. The plan notes that there is already federal funding (likely CMAQ) for the 84 CaBi stations, and even counts 37 that DDOT has already put in, meaning there are 47 to go. This is great, and very important, but not news.

Growing bike lane miles from 56 to 61 is also welcome, but not very significant, especially since Gabe Klein's 2010 DDOT Action Agenda set a goal of 80 miles of bike lanes by 2012. The One City plan specifies putting in the L Street cycle track, but why not include its M Street companion, without which we'll only have a one-way cycle track?

The fact that bike lanes are one of 3 transportation goals in the plan shows that they're a priority, and we shouldn't discount the fact that even one mile or a single block can be a lot of work, but if this wants to be an ambitious vision, it needs to aim higher.

The transportation goals are also very short-term. Each looks no farther out than 2014. It would be great to include higher numbers of CaBi stations, bike lane miles, cycletrack miles in particular, and streetcar lines a number of years out into the future. The education section and others set goals for dates like 2017; why not here?

The sutainability plan set a goal for 2032 of having 75% of trips use biking, walking and transit. It's now about half for commuting trips, and likely lower for other trips. To get there will require more aggressive progress on transportation than this plan sets out.

Economic Development

The mayor makes clear in this document his commitment to a technology innovation hub at St. Elizabeths, which we have discussed recently. That could be a real game changer for the District if it can succeed.

The plan isn't as clear on how to attract more technology jobs; it only cites recent efforts to give money to LivingSocial not to leave and to give a tax break to "tech companies." Ken Archer has argued that both miss the point, and won't create enough incentive for the really important jobs that innovate, create new value, and build "knock-on effects" for the long term.

Another good goal is one to reduce DC's dependence on government jobs. Today, 66% of jobs are in the private sector, and the plan targets 68% by 2013 and 70% by 2021. We should also think about what kind of private sector jobs those are. Government contractor jobs are okay, since if the federal government downsizes it will have to hire more contractors, but tracking and growing the percentage of jobs that aren't even in the government ecosystem, outside of defense contracting and lobbying and all of that, is even better.

The plan calls for a new task force to look at ways to streamline regulations and help businesses; this has the potential to do a lot of good if it gets good people who can think comprehensively about the biggest obstacles for businesses.

Housing

One of the relatively few disappointing pieces of the mayor's budget was the way it raided the Housing Production Trust Fund, which funds loans and other programs for building new affordable housing, to pay for Local Rent Supplement, another important program but one which just gives people money to offset rent. The plan reiterates this as if it were a good accomplishment.

A numerical goal calls for 900 new units of affordable housing by 2014, which DC needs. However, the plan also notes that 1,114 units are in the pipeline, which makes it sound like the goal is already probably in the bag, and if not, there's little the DC government can do at this point. This is another place that could use a stretch goal farther out into the future.

The plan calls for growing DC's population by 3%, about on par with the last year. We can compare this to the sustainability plan, which targets 250,000 new residents by 2032. 3% of our current population is about 18,000; add that number each year and we get 960,000, which beats the goal; with compounding, it's even more (1.09 million).

The question, though, is whether we can just add that many new residents each year without other policy changes. There is a lot of developable land in the pipeline, but it's finite. Without zoning changes to add housing opportunities, DC may have a harder time sustaining that growth.

And much more

There are many more goals in the plan, some excellent, some poor, some just vague. It's great that the Gray administration put together this plan, and set some ambitious goals in some very important areas. Just enumerating priorities matters as well, even when the goals are softer, but future plans would do well to set stretch goals and longer-term metrics for all areas.