Richmond’s new mayor is young, energetic and bursting with ideas. At 36 years old, the James Madison University-educated Levar Stoney represents a new generation of African-American political leadership. He has one foot in the minority community and one in the creative class. His top priority to date has been to restore competence to a city administration plagued by corruption and ineptitude. Now there are signs that he may entertain refreshing ways of thinking about how to deal with poverty.
The traditional Democrat Party urban machine approach has been to spend more money on all manner of government “programs” and “urban renewal” projects that over the years have done little to reverse the scourge of inter-generational poverty and despair. Judging by an op-ed in today’s Richmond Times-Dispatch by Marland Buckner, who served on Stoney’s transition team, City Hall may be open to rethinking that paradigm.
Buckner, co-founder of MB² Solutions, a public policy strategy firm, writes of a “poverty-industrial complex” that encompasses the public housing sector, public schools, and the criminal justice system. It’s not clear exactly how he thinks these institutions have failed the poor, but he advocates four strategies that can help dismantle it.
Evidence-based decision-making. “Evidence-based decision-making,” writes Buckner, “means embracing the tough, costly work associated with evaluating city programs. This is turn requires technology tools and training to ensure that city employees can generate actionable intelligence for decision makers.” Unfortunately, he adds, the city administration is equipped with “technology firmly planted in the 20th century.”
Anti-poverty market research. “Businesses rarely succeed by failing to pay attention to customers,” Buckner says. “The same holds true in anti-poverty policy making. When well-intended programs are built without sufficient attention to what people seeking to lift themselves from poverty actually need, results fall short and disappointment abounds.”
Regional anti-poverty commitments. The Richmond region should pursue anti-poverty programs on a regional basis.
Impact investing. “We cannot tax, spend, or cut our way to helping households achieve self-sufficiency.” Tackling poverty, Buckner says, “demands policy innovation beyond simply asking, “which taxes do we raise or what services must be cut?” He sees impact investing as an alternative — using private dollars to fund social programs that, if successful, create economic value.
The idea of impact investing is appealing, but I would like to see more concrete examples. The only ones that come immediately to mind are not terribly encouraging, such as the privatization of public housing projects by non-profit entities. Still, Buckner is thinking differently, rather than wedding himself to a failed status quo.
Of the four strategies, evidence-based decision-making strikes me as the most important. A couple of weeks ago, I highlighted an example of how the Richmond city jail is using social-scientific analysis to guide its implementation of programs to reduce recidivism. If Stoney accomplishes just two things — restoring competent financial management to city government and instituting evidence-based decision-making — his tenure will be a success. Hopefully, Marland Buckner still has the mayor’s ear.
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