Remarks as Prepared of
U.S. Secretary of Energy Federico Peña
Elmer B. Staats Lecture

1998 Spring Meeting of the National Academy of Public Administration
Boulder, Colorado
June 5, 1998

"Reflections on the Role of Regions"

Thank you, John [Parr]. It is a pleasure to see so many familiar faces in the audience and to be in the company of people who have advised me in so many ways. I want to thank the National Academy of Public Administration for inviting me here today. It was an honor to have been elected a fellow four years ago and now it is a distinct pleasure to have been asked to address you as the Elmer B. Staats lecturer.

It was a real pleasure to meet you this afternoon, Mr. Staats. Your pioneering work in program evaluation has been an inspiration to those of us in public service.

As I address you today, I am coming to the close of my career in public service. It seems appropriate that I should be here, in Colorado, as I reflect upon my experiences, because it was here in Colorado that my 17 years in public administration began.

I have had the unique honor and privilege to serve the American people in three different ways. I began as a state legislator in the Colorado House of Representatives back in 1979. From there, and with the help of my friend, John Parr and others, we went on to "Imagine a Great City, " and then to actually begin building a great city when I served two terms as the Mayor of Denver.

In 1992, I got a call from the Clinton-Gore Transition Team, asking me to come to Washington to help out with the transition at the Department of Transportation -- "just for a week." Now, five and a half years later, as one of the longest-serving officials in the Clinton Cabinet, I am finally stepping down. So, I hope my experience and perspective may be of some value to you in your work.

I'd like to begin with my experience as a Mayor. Those of you from Colorado may remember my mayoral campaign in 1983. You probably recall how some made fun of our idealism... they called us, "Feddy and the Dreamers." Because we did have a dream -- we were imaging a great city... a great metropolitan region that could compete in the global marketplace with cities like Tokyo and Paris.

But we knew that it would take more than those of us in City Hall to transform our imagination into a reality. And so we threw open the doors of City Hall to the most diverse group of citizens that Denver had ever seen -- neighborhood activists, academics, small business owners, minorities, gays, historic preservationists, and labor leaders -- all became "Dreamers."

We realized that citizen participation was critical to building our city. Not just citizen participation in the traditional sense of public hearings, but citizen participation that engaged people in defining our challenges, generating potential solutions, and determining what course we should take.

We knew we needed to reach beyond the traditional insiders if we wanted a government that was truly representative of all people. Those who had long been excluded from the process, who stayed on the margins of the political scene eagerly joined us in imagining and creating a great city.

The breadth and diversity of our support base and our efforts to embrace notions of equity resulted in a solid record of accomplishment for the community. Despite the fact that Denver was in its worst recession since the 1930's, I asked the people of Denver to "invest in their future." And they did. In our two terms, we brought to Denver a new international airport, a major league baseball team, a new central library, a renovated arts complex, a convention center, the restoration of parks, parkways, and public buildings, and a historic "LOOO."

Part of the reason for our success was that we understood that the world sees Denver as you see it -- from an airplane -- without artificial boundaries. We realized that the metropolitan region confronted common issues of air pollution, water, economic development, crime, and transportation. We realized that we needed to market Denver as a six-county economic engine. We realized the foolishness of having each county try to build itself up by running down the others.

We worked with the business community and the Denver Chamber of Commerce was transformed into the Greater Denver Chamber of Commerce, including representatives of suburban counties and municipalities. And we worked together on projects that transcended the increasingly meaningless jurisdictional lines on a map -- most notably on economic development.

It was during that time that I read the work of economist Jane Jacobs' Cities and the Wealth of Nations. Ms. Jacobs posited that cities must do more than provide basic services because they now compete in a global marketplace. Therefore, these cities must devise and implement economic development strategies to strengthen and diversify their economies.

Jacobs' ideas guided much of my thinking during my mayoral days. Now, we have the thinking of Neal Peirce and Curt Johnson's Citistates, David Rusk's Cities Without Suburbs, and Rosabeth Moss Kanter's World Class, which further reinforce these ideas.

The premise of Jacobs' work is that the challenge of revitalization is not the city's alone. For if the "nucleus" city declines, so, too, does the region around a city, "and the region's economic life slowly grows thinner and backward, too. As more and more cities and their regions decline, so does the economy of the nation eventually decline. In reality, the challenge of saving and revitalizing our cities is a national challenge."

It was by sharing this type of thinking about the challenge we were undertaking that we were able to complete projects like the Denver International Airport, the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District, and the new major league baseball team. Let me share those experiences with you. Each is an example of the new collaborative regionalism that all metropolitan areas must now learn to embrace in order to be globally competitive.

In 1975, the FAA and the Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG) determined the Denver metro area needed a new airport. In the ensuing eight years DRCOG conducted numerous studies and reported their findings to local elected officials.

Another example of collaborative regionalism was the creation of the six county Scientific and Cultural Facilities District. We recognized that thousands of people in the Denver metro area crisscrossed city boundaries to enjoy cultural activities such as the opera, the ballet, the symphony, the art museum, and the zoo.

And so we created the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District -- a unique example of regional support for the arts. Voters in the six-county metro Denver area overwhelmingly committed to a one-tenth of one percent sales tax that would directly fund not-for-profit cultural organizations. Today, the District is generating more than $24 million per year and funds more than 200 arts, cultural, and scientific organizations -- a great regional success story.

The gaining of a National League Baseball franchise and the building of Coors field is a third example of collaborative regionalism. Shortly after being elected, I created the Denver Baseball Commission, a non-profit entity financed by the private sector, with in-kind support from the city. After several years of negotiations with major league baseball we realized that a new stadium would be required.

A ballot initiative was drafted for voters in the metropolitan area. The ballot stated that only if granted a team would the $.001 sales tax be imposed. The vote was successful. All jurisdictions in the region were invited to submit plans for a stadium. Denver ended up with Coors Field, which is now a key to the revitalized Central Business District.

All of these examples speak to a new way of thinking that we brought to the Denver. And in 1997, when Fortune magazine named the Denver-Boulder metropolitan area as the second most improved in North America, we felt we had made significant progress toward achieving what had begun more than a decade earlier.

I know that some of you believe that this "functional regionalism" is not enough and that we should be looking harder at structural regionalism. But as the luncheon panel expressed, for those of us working as practitioners, we must find approaches that excite and unite people and political entities -- and invariably this excitement and unity is generated by unique opportunities or problems. Hopefully, those of you in the academy can work at crystallizing the ideas that will excite people about structural changes at the regional level.

At the time the President asked me to serve as his Secretary of Transportation, I believed that the Denver metropolitan area was becoming a region that could begin to compete in the global marketplace. I came to Washington convinced that as regional economies prosper, so does the national economy. And therefore, it was in the federal government's best interest to encourage and support local initiatives, like those we had undertaken in Denver, as a way of growing the national economy.

Cities in a Global Society, by Richard Knight and Gary Gappert, puts it this way, "As national welfare becomes increasingly tied to the global economy, global linkages that are maintained primarily by cities become more critical. The nation's economy depends on the competitiveness of its cities, the quality of their relationship with other cities, their global linkages, and their access to knowledge resources."

In my tenure at Transportation, we saw what happens when cities are -- literally -- torn apart. In the aftermath of the Northridge Earthquake that rocked the Los Angeles area in 1994 and destroyed several key interstate highways, the communities of the Los Angeles area were devastated. Those of us who went to Los Angeles to respond understood that a regional response was needed.

The Federal Highway Administration, the Federal Transit Administration, the California Department of Transportation, the Southern California Association of Governments, and numerous local transit agencies joined forces to make provisions for temporary service until highway links were reopened, in record time, paid for 100 percent with federal funds. Our response, according to the communities involved, was not just timely and efficient but compassionate -- reflecting the highest ideals of government service and federal-state-regional partnership.

The earthquake proved to us that in a time of crisis, we could make multi-sector and multi-level partnerships work. We now need to learn how to do this everyday, not just in times of crisis.

Our experience with ISTEA proves that this is possible and that we can move to a more everyday "collaborative regionalism." ISTEA was enacted in 1991 -- the most significant federal initiative to date in promoting regionalism. From my perspective, ISTEA could be used as a model for other issues in two key ways. First, it clearly tied transportation and air quality together, making it impossible for transportation decision-makers to ignore environmental issues when requesting funding for new projects.

Perhaps just as importantly, ISTEA focused on the process and people that should be involved in the decision-making. Giving the Metropolitan Planning Organizations the responsibility for and authority to make regional transportation decisions, and the requirements that the MPOs open up their processes to environmentalists and other interest groups were critical changes in the way regional decision making is carried out.

Southern California provides a good example. The L.A. Neighborhood Initiative (LANI) links grassroots community building with transportation improvements. Designed as an urban renewal effort focused around major transportation corridors, the initiative involves citizens in reviving the centralized, pedestrian-oriented, main-street character of transit and commercial corridors.

The L.A. Neighborhood Initiative leverages its ISTEA funds with other public, private, local, state, and federal resources and has succeeded in restoring a sense of community to a region that was devastated by the L.A. riots of 1992.

And the reauthorization of ISTEA, which President Clinton may sign as early as next week, ensures that initiatives like LANI will continue. ISTEA II has provided full funding for the continuation of Metropolitan Planning Organization activities.

My experience with ISTEA and all of my experiences during my four year tenure at the Department of Transportation demonstrated to me the potential for positive federal involvement in creating prosperous, liveable regions.

I have enhanced that experience during my past year and a half at the Department of Energy.
As many of you know, probably our greatest challenge at the Department of Energy is cleaning up the tons of nuclear waste that were generated during our nation's production of nuclear weapons. When I was the Mayor of Denver, I learned what it was like to live near one of those waste sites -- Rocky Flats. I can remember the mistrust and frustration we felt toward the Department of Energy -- outsiders from Washington who did not understand our community.

I brought those experiences of Rocky Flats with me to the Department of Energy and I established as one of my priorities the principle that our Department of Energy facilities should be a good neighbor to our communities. I believed that we needed to foster a spirit of trust and cooperation, to bring honesty and openness to all of our actions, and to involve the local and regional communities in our planning processes and decisions.

Just down the road from here in Boulder, the Department facilitated the creation of the Rocky Flats Local Impact Initiative. It involves local elected officials, union and business leaders, environmentalist and peace activists all working to ensure that as the facility becomes decontaminated and then decommissioned, it will become an asset to the region. The Rocky Flats Local Impact Initiative includes individuals who represent the entire northwestern part of the region, many of whom I met with earlier today.

As with the closing of so many federal installations, the initial reaction to Rocky Flats' closure was one of fear over the loss of jobs and the potential negative impact on the economy. But as the federal government is learning in so many places where it closes properties, if it can help organize a multisectoral, regional group of leaders to plan for future uses, the results can be positive.

New jobs get created, land for new housing and business development comes on the market, and open space is created. The Rocky Flats Local Impact Initiative is now working closely with the Department to guide Rocky Flats future development for the benefit of the entire region. And that model is being replicated at all of the Department's former nuclear weapons production sites.

As I am preparing to end my time at the Department of Energy, I am proud of the progress we have made toward building stronger communities. And as I leave, I want to take a moment to reflect on a bigger picture view of the federal government's role in building stronger communities and regions -- the topic of your latest study.

Let me first commend you on a thoughtful, insightful, and fine piece of work. I found that many of my experiences in public administration, including those I have shared here today, were synergistic with the points you made in the study. I want to reflect particularly on some of the recommendations you made regarding options for federal actions to support regional collaboration.

First of all -- the idea that small amounts of federal funds could be used for sharing information among regions and for supporting a limited number of regional collaborative efforts is an excellent idea.

The federal government is in the position of knowing what is happening in many different regions of the country. The experiences of an administrator in, say, Houston, might be particularly relevant to an administrator, in perhaps, Boston. However, too often those success stories are lost. I believe it would be very productive for the federal government to support workshops or conferences that would encourage information sharing among regions, so that our best success stories can be replicated in other regions.

The second recommendation of your report involves simplification and flexibility. We all know that the red tape and regulation surrounding various grant programs hinders our ability to effectively build meaningful regional relationships. I agree wholeheartedly with your observations about the deleterious effect this has on regional initiatives.

In answer to this, I would propose giving Cabinet Secretaries the authority to waive these regulations in instances where it is in the best interest of the region and the agency to do so. There is no sense in wasting time shuffling paper back and forth when we could instead be imagining great cities and building great metropolitan regions.

Thirdly, you note the valuable role of the federal government in providing regions with benchmarking tools. Again, I agree. The federal government should continue to play a role as the arbiter and disseminator of meaningful information. In today's information age, we now have new opportunities and new technologies that we can put to use in order to ensure that information is collected and disseminated in the most efficient possible manner. At the federal level, we should take the lead in making our information part of the information age.

Finally, the report recognizes the unique position that federal officials hold -- I believe you call it "access to the bully pulpit."

This, in my opinion, is the most valuable of all of the recommendations. Federal officials, and by this I mean officials at the secretarial level, can -- and should -- use their positions to bring people to the table, to facilitate partnerships, and to encourage people to work together. My experience shows that this has been the single most effective way to promote regional collaborations -- simply by getting the right people in a room together. The results, as I learned both in Denver and in Washington -- can be dramatic.

Your report also inspired me to begin thinking of additional ways we might promote regional collaborations -- perhaps by tying departmental funding for certain programs to the extent to which regional partnerships play a role in their planning and implementation. Or we could set aside certain funds specifically earmarked for regional proposals to take up issues such as housing, welfare reform, or economic development -- sort of an incentive fund for regional collaborations.

As I reflect upon ideas such as these, and upon my experiences, it strikes me that the role of regions in a national economy will become increasingly critical as we enter the 21st century. It is certainly true that the challenge of saving and revitalizing our metropolitan areas is, indeed, a national challenge. And, as your work points out, it deserves a national solution.

One of my favorite sayings is that the bureaucracy protects the status quo long after the "quo" has lost its status. But I do believe that we are making some progress. And with the respected guidance and leadership of this organization and the cooperation of federal officials, I believe we can begin to imagine great cities and to build great metropolitan regions throughout the country.

Thank you. I would be happy to take any questions or comments.