studies on municipal operations, finances, and infrastructure; providing significant funding for the OITF; and leading the effort to implement the OITF through targeted investments in staff training, critical personnel initiatives, land information systems, and other innovations for which scarce tax dollars were unavailable. Voinovich writes with obvious pride of the partnership’s success in encouraging the foundations, businesses, and civic leaders to invest in two of the city’s most successful downtown development projects: the Cleveland lakefront, home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Great Lakes Science Center; and Playhouse Square, the nation’s second-largest theater complex.
This chapter is important not just for its recounting of the catalytic role that philanthropy has played in Cleveland. Voinovich wrote it in the hope that he could encourage other communities to engage their own philanthropies in the work of their city. He firmly believed that civic partnering is everyone’s business and that no organization or individual who cared about their community could be left on the sidelines watching the game. In his roles as mayor and governor, he did everything he could to encourage everyone to get in the game.
Finally, Voinovich was a civic entrepreneur who understood instinctively that in order to accomplish great things, a community must develop trust among its members and build a record of success through collaboration to replace a history of frustration and conflict. He accomplished this by bringing together all of the parties who had an interest in pursuing a big idea and then relentlessly challenging them to “do the doable.” He began with the OITF, an initiative that bore long-term results. By focusing first on achieving basic operational improvements in city government, he and his team built the skills, credibility, and relationships of trust, both within and outside city hall, that enabled the city to pursue increasingly complex projects. Simply put, he believed that by beginning at the beginning with an operations improvement task force, a new mayor or governor can build a network of P3s that can tackle the difficult challenges they face.
Voinovich did not write this primer as a biography celebrating his considerable successes as a public leader. That, he believed, would be for others to do. He wrote it for the leaders of today and tomorrow who, as he was, are confronted with the challenge of doing the public’s work in the face of economic uncertainty and severely constrained resources. He believed that “together we can do it” and daily put that mantra to work in a public career that spanned five decades and earned him the reputation as the most successful public leader in Ohio’s history. He wrote this primer in the hope that by applying his hard-won lessons, you, the reader, might navigate with greater certainty the uncharted waters of public service in the months and years ahead.
One
Why We Did It
You might wonder why, at this late stage in life, someone who has been a state representative, county auditor, county commissioner, lieutenant governor, mayor, governor, and senator would be writing a handbook on public-private partnerships (P3s). The reason is simple: I want to continue to make a difference for my country, and I truly believe that this handbook will help improve the management of cities and towns across America and enhance the quality of life of their residents.
My belief in the P3, which in general terms is an outcome-based collaboration between local government and business, has not changed over my forty-four years of government service or four years of “retirement.” As I once put it, “Successful local economic development and management of cities . . . will largely depend on a community’s ability to foster effective public private partnerships.”1 I still believe that, and I’m not the only one.
In addition, this book is a case study of Cleveland’s Operations Improvement Task Force (OITF), the P3 that helped turn the city around in the 1980s when I was mayor. It also presents an overview of the related Total Quality Management (TQM) and continuous improvement program that I implemented at the state level in the early 1990s when I was governor. It is a how-to manual that will not only explain the technical aspects of creating a P3 but also describe how the private sector can be a powerful agent in improving the operations of local government. It sets forth how the Cleveland task force was created; what motivated those who gave of their time, talent, and money; and how the partners monitored the implementation of its recommendations.
Moreover, the book will demonstrate how this joint endeavor improved city government, fostered a decades-long partnership between the city and private sector, and spawned other collaborative projects that continue to this day. It tells the story of how Cleveland was saved—and believe me, “saved” is not an overstatement.
Some might argue that the federal and state governments can and must do more to help local governments financially. Experience, however, shows that they are mistaken. The best that realistically can be hoped for is to maintain those state and federal programs that make a difference in our cities, such as community development block grants, the low-income housing tax credit, and the new markets tax credit. But the future of these programs remains in jeopardy because of our country’s unsustainable debt situation.
Trends in state government policy have exacerbated the difficulties facing local governments. I recall a speech that I gave at the National League of Cities convention in 1981, when I was mayor. I noted that a number of governors, when talking about state and local control, made the words “local government” sound almost like a slur.
In 1981, when President Ronald Reagan organized the New Federalism Task Force to affirm the primacy of the Tenth Amendment authority of the states over that of the federal government regarding local issues, I pointed out that the reason why so many cities were coming to the federal government with a tin cup was that their states gave them no ability to raise revenues on the local level. I suggested that President Reagan call a meeting of governors to urge them to provide the revenue vehicles necessary for local governments to meet their responsibilities. My belief was, and is, that dollars raised locally are the best-spent dollars—and even better, they do not include the brokerage fees collected by the federal government.
These political and economic contexts are powerful and must be addressed on multiple levels. P3s, while not the solution to every problem, can do much to help state and local governments navigate their way toward outcomes that better address citizen needs, including job creation and economic growth. This is the central subject of this handbook, and the story begins with the first formal P3 that I helped create, the OITF in Cleveland. I have always taken a pragmatic approach to problem solving, and the P3 is a powerful tool.
The need for such an approach has intensified in the intervening years. The growing public frustration with Washington, and, in some cases, with state capitals, has increased both the need and the desire for action on the local level. And even though corporations of all sizes are leaner than they were thirty-five years ago, I’m confident that they are still as ready to get into the arena with local government as were corporate leaders in Cleveland in the 1980s. In his journal article “Business Leadership Lessons from the Cleveland Turnaround,” James E. Austin captured what happened in that place and time: “A relatively small group of Cleveland business and civic leaders stepped forward after the bankruptcy to move the community in new directions. Among these were the CEOs of the city’s biggest corporations who were clearly recognized as the informal leaders of the local business community. Together, these leaders, through ‘personal selling,’ were able to convince their colleagues at other major companies of the imperative of action.”2
There’s another resource to be tapped, as well: citizen volunteers. As people live longer and, in some cases, retire earlier, many are looking for an opportunity to use their talent, time, energy, and experience to make a difference in their community. They have been joined by a generation of millennials who are interested in urban affairs and are looking for ways to contribute. And there are people like Ed Richard, my executive assistant when I was mayor, who left his successful private business to work in government because of a similar motivation. His business background and experience turned out to be indispensable to improving Cleveland during his ten years in my administration.
I’d known Ed for several years before then. He was the founder of the Council of Small Enterprises, a group of small businessmen who