|
The 18th annual National Public
Service Award winners are:
Dean
School of Public Affairs
The American University
Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public and Indian Housing
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
City Manager
City of Alexandria, Virginia
County Manager
Wake County, North Carolina
Associate Commissioner
Head Start Bureau
Administration on Children Youth and Families
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
President
Davie County Foundation, NC
The awards were presented in San Diego, California on April
3, at a luncheon ceremony held in conjunction with the annual
conference of the American Society for Public Administration,
at the Town and Country Hotel and Convention Center.
The 2000 award winners have served with
distinction in their varied careers.
As one whose career has crossed from public service to academia
on several occasions, Dr. Walter Broadnax has provided top-level
leadership at the state and federal levels and taught generations
of students to do the same. As deputy secretary for the Department
of Health and Human Services (1993-96) he handled the day-to-day
management of the largest federal department. He chaired the
HHS Policy Steering Group of Reinventing Government II and
led departmental implementation of the recommendations from
the National Performance Review. He served on the President's
Management Council and as Vice President Gore's special advisor
for labor-management relations. He was also a member of the
National Partnership Council, created to establish labor-management
partnerships throughout the government. "Walter's years
of experience in public service were invaluable in helping
the Council anticipate and respond to obstacles ... in bridging
the gaps between union members and agency managers,"
according to John Koskinen, of the President's Council on
Year 2000 Conversion.
Dr. Broadnax has also served as the director
of Services to Children, Youth, and Adults for the State of
Kansas and as the president for the New York State Civil Service
Commission.
Currently, Dr. Broadnax is dean and professor
of public administration for The American University's School
of Public Affairs. He previously served as the director of
Innovations in State and Local Government, a joint venture
between the Ford Foundation and Harvard University, and the
director of the Bureau of Governmental Research for the School
of Public Affairs at the University of Maryland.
Dr. Broadnax was nominated by Claire Felbinger,
chair of the Department of Public Administration at The American
University.
As deputy assistant secretary for public and assisted
housing delivery at the Department of Housing and Urban Development,
Gloria Cousar has devoted more than 20 years of professional
service to expanding and maintaining affordable housing opportunities
in the United States and to securing innovative community
partnerships in which the poor and disadvantaged are empowered
to improve themselves and their quality of life. She favors
collaborative approaches to intractable problems such as hate
crimes and youth gang violence. Team efforts Ms Cousar led
won two of the department's Best Practices Awards, including
one for conducting a national conference on hate crimes, "Healing
Neighborhoods," at which more than 300 community leaders
from many states came together on behalf of reducing discrimination
and hate crimes in public and assisted housing. A second award
was based on restoring credibility to the department's system
for tracking and reporting on those being served in public
and assisted housing, with average reporting levels by nearly
5,000 funding recipients, rising more than 40 percent in a
single year.
Over the past year, she led the department's
effort to implement a congressional mandate to revise the
way more than $8.5 billion in renewal funding for Section
8 vouchers to house over 1.5 million poor families, is allocated
and distributed to over 2100 agencies. The negotiated rule-making
required that she handle face to face negotiations with critics
and supporters representing all parts of the country, state
and local interests, and various sized communities. She did
"a superlative job of remaining true to the spirit of
the negotiations," according to Lawrence Susskind of
MIT, who was the lead mediator for the rewriting process.
Ms. Cousar's commitment to affordable housing
and social transformation extends beyond the workday. As a
child, she grew up in public housing with a strong community
ethic that inspired her to choose public service as a career.
After serving in the Carter administration, she founded and
directed the Greater Washington Mutual Housing Association,
a non-profit that managed and redeveloped low-income housing
cooperatives and trained tenant-owner Boards in the District
of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia. She is also a minister
in Reston, Va. for the interfaith Community Chapel of Wholistic
Healing. Ms. Cousar was nominated by Gail Christopher, formerly
of the Alliance for Redesigning Government and now with Harvard
University.
As city manager of Alexandria, Virginia, Vola Lawson is known
for her astute leadership in planning and fiscal management
as well as her personal commitment to equal rights and opportunities
for women, minorities, people with disabilities, and senior
citizens. When appointed in 1985, she was only the third woman
in the United States to serve as city manager in a city with
a population more than 100,000. Her 15-year tenure is more
than twice the national average.
Under Mrs. Lawson's leadership, the City
of Alexandria capital debt has been reduced from $1,000 per
capital to $245. The city has secured a AAA bond rating from
Wall Street's major credit institutions, a distinction shared
with only 22 other cities in the country.
As a founder of the Northern Virginia Housing
Coalition, Mrs. Lawson helped to secure increased state funding
for affordable housing throughout Virginia. In endorsing her
nomination for the award, Congressman Jim Moran noted that
she "defines the term public servant. Alexandria has
one of the highest ratios of subsidized housing, low income
and non-English speaking students and families for its total
population, as any suburban community in the country. Yet
no one has been left behind nor been exploited in the pursuit
of progress."
Before becoming city manager, she was active
in the Civil Rights Movement and, with her husband David,
organized the Parkfairfax Citizens Association. Mrs. Lawson
was nominated by the Northern Virginia Chapter of the American
Society of Public Administration.
During a 15-year period of dramatic social and political changes,
Richard Y. Stevens has served as County Manager for Wake County,
North Carolina, helping provide a broader range of services
to an increasingly urban population while maintaining fiscal
integrity. He reorganized the human services functions, consolidating
disparate public health, mental health, and social services
into an integrated client and outcome-oriented human services
system, and oversaw development of a non-traditional regional
library system that has resulted in substantial increases
in materials circulation and patron usage.
Mr. Stevens greatest challenge, according
to Yuma County, AZ Administration Wally Hill (who previously
worked in Wake County), came in 1994 when the county commissioners
ordered a major cut in property tax rate without reducing
county services. "Richard quickly assembled his department
heads and challenged them all to develop downsizing plans
that focused on eliminating management/supervisory position
while maintaining services in as intact a manner as possible.
He took the lead in that restructuring by eliminating the
three assistant county manager positions." To cushion
the restructuring blow, Mr. Stevens developed an outplacement
support program for employees and was ultimately able to manage
the property tax reduction with "little obvious compromise
in services to the customers."
Often cited as a mentor for others, Mr.
Stevens has developed opportunities for student interns and
graduates within Wake County government. "This professional
training ground will continue to pay dividends to local governments
across our state for a long time to come," according
to Ronald Aycock, executive director of the North Carolina
Association of County Commissioners.
Mr. Stevens has also chaired the Board of
Trustees for the University of North Carolina as well as the
nationwide Council of Board Chairs of the National Association
of Colleges and Universities. He was nominated by Deil S.
Wright of the university's Political Science Department.
Children have been at the forefront of the career of Helen
H. Taylor for decades, whether she is assisting them directly
through child-care programs or ensuring that such programs
best meet the needs of low-income families. As director of
the nation's Head Start program since 1994, she searched for
and overcame the bureaucratic and fiscal obstacles to providing
full-day services so that parents could work - 50,000 Head
Start Children are now in such programs. After the 1994 Head
Start reauthorization, Ms. Taylor oversaw creation of a program
for infants and toddlers even in the face of a dramatic national
shortage of qualified teachers. Today, more than 50,000 children
receive Early Head Start services in 500 programs across the
country.
While it is difficult to build new programs,
it can be an even greater challenge to ensure quality in a
field where the ultimate customers -- the children -- cannot
provide much evaluation themselves. Under Ms. Taylor's leadership,
Head Start now combines support for quality programs (such
as funding for staff training and technical assistance) with
state-of-the-art program standards that reflect research results
and a tough monitoring approach. During her tenure, 125 Head
Start programs have lost funding because they did not meet
quality standards and could not reach them after one year
of help. In the words of Edward Zigler of Yale University,
who helped plan the original program and has known every Head
Start bureau chief since the program began, "Helen Taylor
has been the most effective Head Start Bureau chief over the
35-year history of this program...children and their families
that enroll in this program owe Helen a tremendous debt of
gratitude."
Helen previously served as executive director
of the National Child Day Care Association, Inc., (NCDCA)
the largest private provider of child development and child
care services in the District of Columbia. Under her leadership,
it grew to serve more than 1,300 children. She also chaired
the Mayor's Advisory Committee on Early Childhood Development
in the District of Columbia. Ms. Taylor was nominated by Olivia
A. Golden, Assistant Secretary for Children and Families in
the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Kent Mathewson exemplifies an individual who has kept the
flame of public service burning throughout his life. After
40 years as a public servant at the local and federal levels,
he has continued rendering very direct service to the communities
in which he lives for 20 years.
He was appointed as assistant "municipal student intern"
to the city manager in San Diego, CA in 1939, and later as
assistant to the city manager. He served in the latter post
or as city manager in five cities (in three states) between
1939 and 1964. While serving in Salem, Oregon, he established
the first multi-level Council of Governments in the United
States.
From 1964-80, Mr. Mathewson was President,
Metropolitan Fund, Inc., in Detroit, an urban affairs foundation
that developed research and action on metropolitan problems.
Under his leadership, the Fund helped develop the Southeast
Michigan Council of Governments, New Detroit, Inc., and the
Southeast Michigan Transportation Authority.
Mr. Mathewson is a former vice-president
of the International City Management Association and served
as president of four state and regional city manager associations.
In 1979, he became the first member of the Intergovernmental
Hall of Fame of the National Association of Regional Councils,
and he has received the Distinguished Citizen's Award, National
Municipal League. He was elected a NAPA Fellow in 1973.
Since "retirement," Mr. Mathewson
has taught at the LBJ School in Austin, where he received
the "best educator" award in 1983 from the local
ASPA Chapter. He helped the newly incorporated town of Lewisville,
NC by serving as its first town manager. He founded and continues
to serve as president of the North Carolina Davie County Foundation.
Today, Mr. Mathewson is also president of
the Kinderton, North Carolina Civic Association and vice-president
of Davie County Hospital Board and Hillsdale Tomorrow. Mr.
Mathewson is also chairman of his Church Board. He credits
much of his success to the participation of his wife, Mariana,
in his career and the communities they served. He was nominated
by Mr. Wes Kvartsen, the retired director of the Department
of Land Conservation and Development for the State of Oregon.
For additional information on the National
Public Service Awards or the April 3 presentation in San Diego,
CA, please contact Elaine L. Orr, 2000 NPSA Coordinator on
(202) 347-3190 or via email at eorr@napawash.org.
|
