Sharon Pratt Kelly was Mayor of Washington, D.C., from 1990 through 1994. She was the first African-American woman to serve as mayor of a major city. She has also held several posts in the Democratic National Committee and in private industry, and is now a Fellow at the Institute of Politics. Recently, she shared some of her thoughts about the problems facing American cities--particularly the District of Columbia--and some possible remedies.
PERSPECTIVE: Washington, D.C., has had the distinction of being called the murder capital of the nation for the past few years. What do you feel is the best way cities can control violence? Or is it beyond the control of cities?
MAYOR KELLY: I think it is critical to have a much stronger partnership with the federal government. ... some of it is well within our control, and in fact, while [I was] mayor we saw the crime rates make the most significant drop in seven years. ... That was from getting police much more involved in the neighborhoods and therefore building a network with the citizens so that it's preventative in nature. It was also strengthening the police-training program and the communications system of the police department. It also meant much stronger partnerships with the Prince George's County police, the state of Maryland police and ... heavy, heavy preventative programs.
Did you see neighborhood patrol groups and community gun-turn-in projects as successful?
I actually felt that the orange hats ... made a big difference, because they really had consistent patrols. It was something that was quite predictable, and it did make a difference. ... When they had the follow-up of the police, it made a monumental difference.
The District school system has metal detectors, police officers, security guards, and random locker searches, yet this past December a youth went into a high school building and shot another student. Your successor, Mayor Barry, said that there is nothing else the city could have done--they had done all they could and this just happened. Do you agree with him?
My experience was that having the increased police presence, the random locker checks and the like did make a difference. You do however have to have the steady discipline for it to continue to make a difference. However, there is no better cure or remedy than changing the culture inside the schools. That means continuing to emphasize preventative programs which, sadly, Mr. Barry has eliminated.
What programs would those be?
He eliminated all the youth initiative programs, every last one of them. We had them starting from prenatal care and preschool care; we had a targeted turning-points program for elementary school and junior high school.
Housing projects tend to be high-crime areas where innocent people, who can't afford to live anywhere else, are in danger just because they live there. Do you see a way of making housing projects safer and more successful?
I think that the more control you give the tenants, ... [the more] it's to everybody's advantage. I also believe that it is better to have mixed use; that is, you have a mixture of moderate and low income residents and do not have all of the same kinds of problems isolated in one place.
Do you see any cities moving toward this kind of mixed-use housing or are all of them sticking to their large housing projects?
I think New York has had some measure of success. A lot of it is limited, however, by federal regulation. I think the federal government has got to become a much more hands-on, useful partner rather than just a red-tape regulator. When we created that special partnership with [the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development], it was helping us make a difference. Unfortunately we had a judge who was eager to undermine that. I think when you have that solid partnership, you can begin to come up with a paradigm that works for a particular community.
What was the District moving toward before the judge blocked it?
We were moving toward more mixed-use housing. We were also moving toward not as much of a concentration of the population in one particular place. We were looking to alternative procurement practices as a way to get repair work done faster. There was also a commitment on both parties' part to do significant remodeling and come back, let's say, with townhouse type models, so that you limit the easy entrance into the building. ... When you set up a model like a town house, then you don't have those hallways that become easy havens for drug dealers.
So setting up these kind of models is an incentive for the upper half of the mixed group to move into the neighborhoods?
Exactly.
The Rodney King incident was a national news event, but Washington also had a racial incident involving the police that led to a riot. This incident involved a Hispanic man who was possibly treated improperly by a police officer. What do you see as a method of improving race relations in general, but specifically ending the prejudices of police officers that have to patrol throughout a city and protect everyone?
The only way you can begin to make a real difference there is that you've got to change the profile of the people who are providers of service. We dramatically improved the number of Hispanic police officers, with an aggressive "affirmative action" program to bring in more Hispanic officers. ... We made certain that we had programs that included the Hispanic community. ... There is no substitute for it because that is what begins to sensitize the department.
Are you suggesting that it is better off for the Hispanic community to be served only by Hispanic officers?
No. I do think that it is impossible for one culture to always understand the many needs of another culture. So you have to have all the cultures at the table in shaping policies and programs.
Right now, the District is going through major solvency problems, and many other major cities recently have had the same problem. What steps can a city take to relieve a financial crisis? Is there anything that should definitely be immune from alteration?
Well, I think children's programs should be immune from alteration, but other than that I think you've got to [try] privatization, cutting services, cutting the size of the work force. Part of the challenge however, is that just as revenues are falling, so are the social needs growing. To exacerbate it further, you generally have a work force that is poorly trained and a [weak] infrastructure. ... it's not suited for automation, so in order to try to keep apace, what I had to do was to invest in buildings and automation and training at a time when I was cutting workers. That's a good way to lose a lot of political points.
What types of services should be privatized?
Services in public works, a lot of that lends itself to privatization, such as waste water treatment. We privatized all of the recycling. There are aspects of street cleaning that can be privatized. We're moving to privatize a lot of your HMO services because your most significant cost was in health care. If you can have managed health care, that is useful. ...
When you said that children's services should be immune from cuts, does that include public education?
Not every aspect of public education; I do think that they have to reexamine the profile of their personnel. [There's] a high concentration of teachers who are not in the classroom, and that needs to be reexamined. The problem, however, that you also have in government is that you can't just cut. You need to also look at the personnel system. Right now, that personnel system will only allow you to use a blunt instrument to cut. ... You should be able to select what skills you actually need and based upon the skills you need, keep the [employees] you need and get rid of [the ones] you don't need. The personnel system in government is in no way designed to do that. It's only designed to protect the worker from abuses by management.
Considering the fiscal crisis going on in the District, some people are questioning how wise home rule ever was. There is likely to be some greater amount of federal oversight of the District in the near future. How do you think this affects the chances of the District ever achieving statehood?
Well, in this environment I think it is very tough. I think that a real honest analysis of what transpired is that they set up the system for [D.C.] to remain like a little principality that essentially would be supported by a monarchy called the United States Congress. As long as the principality remained very small, it was affordable, but once it began to grow and become a major international gateway, then the Congress could no longer afford it. So it needed to be able to become self-sufficient. There's only one way for a government to be able to capture revenue: that's to be able to tax. Any other territory, I mean any other territory including the Virgin Islands, would be able to tax anyone who earned income there. ... In the District and only in the District are you not able to tax those folks who use [government services], if they don't live there. ... As the principality grew in numbers, only the people who lived there were taxed. So ultimately ... a handful of people are at an artificially high tax rate because they couldn't spread the costs.
So you feel the District wouldn't be in this situation if it were a state?
No, we would not. Or if we were a territory.
Or if it were allowed a commuter tax?
Right, which you would have if you were a territory or a state. The District is the only city that takes on Medicaid, corrections, highways, all of the state responsibilities. So you can't have it both ways. It was set up to fail. In that regard, you can say that limited home rule doesn't work, but real home rule will work.
Do you feel that Congress will ever give the District that right?
At some point they are going to have to, because they can't afford to maintain it. But they are going to play politics in between.
How long into the future are you looking?
I don't know. I would suspect that in four or five years you will have to have some sort of taxing authority. Otherwise, this great burden falls on all the American people and it ought not to. Why should the people of Wyoming have to subsidize the District of Columbia? ... You push the middle class out with this tax structure. ... You can't stabilize [the financial situation] if you have a structure that pushes the middle class out, and the middle class is the backbone of any community.