59 How COVID impacted local government
[Mark Funkhouser](https://twitter.com/mayorfunk),former Mayor of Kansas City and owner of [Funkhouser and Associates](https://twitter.com/mayorfunk)joins us for a conversation the impact COVID-19 has had on state and local government. We'll also dive into a conversation about Federal policy response and what those relief funds mean for governments.<br><br>### Resources and Shoutouts:<br>- [The Sum of Us](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53231851-the-sum-of-us?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=nnRLWP5tfO&rank=1)<br>- [American Nations](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11140803-american-nations?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=cLQCpR4vgt&rank=1)<br>- [Union](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48889991-union?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=VHvgy5o4fb&rank=1)<br>- [Twitter and Tear Gas](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32714239-twitter-and-tear-gas?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=gYWzRPNaVt&rank=1)<br>- [Slow Boring Newsletter](https://www.slowboring.com/)<br><br>##### Music Credit: [Tumbleweeds by Monkey Warhol](http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Monkey_Warhol/Lonely_Hearts_Challenge/Monkey_Warhol_-_Tumbleweeds)
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Transcript
Hello. I'm Ryan Cook, and this is Civic Tech Chat, a podcast about the civic technology movement. We seek to harness the power technology has to improve the delivery of public services to people everywhere. Mark, Mark, thank you so much for joining us here on Civic Tech Chat. Could you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about what you do?
Sure. I'm Mark Funkhauser. I'm, president of, a little consulting firm called Funk Alger and Associates. I've had a long career, so I've got a lot of formers. I was a former auditor. I was a former mayor. I was a former publisher of Governing Magazine. And now, with Funk Alger and Associates, what we do is help local governments perform better. And we do that in lots of ways, but the main focus is on relationships.
What would you say is your personal why? That thing that drives you to get out of bed each morning and do what you do.
Well, if you care about people and you care about your family and your neighbors and so forth and so on, then local government becomes incredibly important. The quality of life, what are the parks like? What are the police like? What is the, you know, what are the streets like? Is it safe? Is it clean? Is it nice? All that stuff is wound up in local government, in management, and leadership, and politics in local government. And, I've been interested in that basically my entire adult life.
As you mentioned in your intro, you know, you've worked in a number of different roles. You've worked as an auditor. You've been a teacher, you've been a publisher, you've served as the mayor of Kansas City. And as mentioned, you you own your own firm now. As you're thinking back on that path, are there any lessons you've learned along the way that you'd be willing to share with folks?
Two come right to mind. One is this stuff is a lot harder than it looks. So local government managing a local government, either in a role like, as the city manager or in a role as a mayor is really hard, and it's not gotten any easier over the decades. And so I've learned to have an awful lot of empathy and patience for folks. My stint as mayor was the most difficult thing I ever did. And I've had a very successful career. Things have gone well for me, but that that was hard, and I see it now in other folks. The the second thing that I've learned is that the people who work in government, state government, local government, are much better than they seem, you know, than they seem in the media, than they seem from a distance. When you talk to them one on one as we did, in a governing and as I do now, and as you examine what they're doing, as I did as an auditor, what you find is they're trying hard. They're smart. They're honest. They're capable, and they're working as hard as they can, but it is difficult. And so I have grown over the years in my respect for, folks, who take the plunge and work, in local government.
Are there any podcasts, print media, videos, or things in other mediums that you'd recommend to our listeners?
I am big for reading books. And so, I, you know and the most important book that I've read, over the last ten years, just came out recently, 2021. Heather McGhee's The Sum of Us, where she talks about, race relations in The United States and the history of them and where it has brought us and what she calls the solidarity dividend when we are able to work together. Other, books that have really influenced me, Colin Woodard, did a book American Nations about the differences among us over, our country. And then he did a recent book called Union, which is, about the struggle to define the story of America over the last two hundred and fifty years. And, that struggle about the story of America still unfolds, you know, with the 1619 project versus the seventies 1776 project. That's that's a current issue. And, I'm reading something right now, by, Zainab, Tufekci, Twitter and tear gas, which is really interesting looking at the intersection of social media protest and governance, in the world today. And I read probably a dozen different newsletters every morning, and, the one that I pay the most attention to is Matt Iglesias' slow boring, because he's got he cites so many, studies and charts and graphs and data that, you know, it's not just somebody spelling off opinions. There's an awful lot of sort of research behind it. I find it useful.
Let's go ahead and segue into our main topic around COVID nineteen and its impact on state and local governments. So for from your perspective, as as you've been kinda looking at what's going on in those spaces, what level of impact would you say that we've seen so far on on those sorts of governments?
It's been incredible. It's been off the charts. The 2020 was just, you know, an awesome, not in a good way, year for local government. Because not only did you have the pandemic, you know, and all that that problem with it, but you had a huge economic disruption and turmoil. And then with the murder of George Floyd, you had the largest social protest movement in the history of The United States. And trying to, fairly and effectively deliver services in the middle of all that, manage your staff in the middle of all that has just been incredibly challenging. And and the changes just keep coming one after another after another. We had the most, contested and tempestuous election in 2020 that we have had in generations. And elections are administered by secretaries of state at the state level and county and city boards of elections. Those are local, government having to manage that stuff. So it's just when I listen and talk to folks, you know, it is just overwhelming. And and at this point, now in late May and, of course, we had the whole vaccination, mask, no mask, all that, you know, controversy. Many of the local government, folks are just, tired. They're just worn out by the stress and the stress and the we've all had a lot of stress, but some of us have not had to manage everybody else's stress too.
No no doubt. Yeah. It's definitely been a difficult year for everybody. And I I imagine that, this is something that's, cost those local governments a considerable amount of revenue coming in to provide services. And I would suspect that there are some folks listening that maybe are familiar with the idea of, like, a rainy day fund. Whether they've heard it when someone's been running for office, in a campaign, something like that. Usually gets talked about. Is that mechanism something that, I guess I guess what I would suspect is that probably a crisis like this is just far too big for any states, like, reasonably plan for it in in in that sort of capacity. Is that something that from your perspective is true, or are there things states could be trying to do to try to prepare for events of this of this
level? Two or three responses to that, Ryan. One, the great recession of two thousand seven, 08/09 was devastating for state, but particularly local governments. And there's a real divergence between the revenue structures of states and local governments. States have a more stable revenue structure, and they set the rules for local government. And those local government those rules are not friendly usually to local government. So local governments really got hit hard in the great recession, and they learned a lot of lessons about the rainy day fund, build it up, take care of it. And when this pandemic hit, they had built their reserves up to the, you know, historic levels. They had done a good job of, of putting aside money. But this thing was sudden and huge, and, of course, it devastated, those reserve funds. And what happened, in in many cases was that people in order when when revenue dropped like a rock, and yet you have essential workers like firefighters, EMT, police, and so forth, the garbage still needs to be picked up. All that stuff needs to happen. A lot of places spent down their reserve funds rather than lay people off. And, fortunately, the CARES Act, reimbursed at least the cost. There were extraordinary costs associated, in including the pay of those, essential workers, but it did not allow governments to replace lost revenue. And the revenue impact was, in many cases, much greater than the, than the the cost impact of, of the pandemic.
That must have been quite a, well, to use the the idiom, a great leap of faith on their part to do things like, like, pay pay off from the reserve in order to, like, keep the quality of life of, like, folks working for the government there. I imagine because they and we're I guess we'll talk about the response here in a little bit. But I guess the they're under the assumption that the federal government will do something, right, in order to kinda help us out. I imagine, like, that's a a difficult decision to make in in that situation.
Well, if I drop you in the middle of the ocean and you start treading water, you're gonna tread water as long as you can. You're gonna hope somebody shows up to save you, but you're gonna keep treading water. And that's really there was a lot of talk that was encouraging, at the federal level that, you know, gave people some hope. But mostly of course, they the really prudent managers in local government began immediately to furlough folks and, you know, and, hold on to their cash and so on. And, basically, what you're trying to do I mean, that's why you have a reserve fund, is to try and get you through, this, period. But you have to be you know, you you don't just keep whistling in the dark and spending money and hope that things get better. You do two things at the same time. You know? First, you start making changes. And then second, you also use your reserve fund to carry you to where you hope those changes will have, effect and impact.
In response to what we've talked about, you know, as state local governments have been out there, you know, trying to throw the water and and survive this year, the federal government is going to do something, as it turns out. The Biden administration has included funds for state and local governments in the American Rescue Plan. For folks that maybe haven't heard much about that that package, can you give us a high level description of, what it is?
Well, it it it's a huge package. It's like 1,900,000,000,000.0 or something like that. But, and there are lots of different funds in it, including checks to many Americans who have $1,400. But for state and local government, it's $350,000,000,000 in direct aid. For perspective, that is, much larger than the CARES Act. And the scope of what you're allowed to use the money for is much broader than under the CARES Act, including, specifically replacing lost revenue within certain parameters so it is it is huge and it represents an opportunity for local governments to make transformative kinds of changes. And so prudent local government leaders are looking at it very carefully as, you know, this is a once in a generation kind of opportunity. Let's don't blow it.
As you mentioned, you know, we we are talking about a program with a lot of money. I think you alluded to that 350,000,000,000 where it's, like, a 195 ish of it is going to states, another 65 to counties, another 45 may well, I guess closer to 46 to cities among them. Other allocations, there's some other funds there too for other types of communities. Does the sheer scale of that affect how those getting these, these funds, ultimately go about making spending decisions on how they're gonna use them? I I think it does.
And and what it does is tell you that, you know, as I said, this is a transformative opportunity. You know, it's much bigger than, you know, just, you know, sort of a normal amount of money. And so you want to, you know, you you wanna sort of rise to the occasion. You know? There's, you know, saying, you know, to whom much is given, much is expected. You know? Your citizens, expect you to do big things with big money, and they want to see what you've done. So it's it it I think the first effect was sort of daunting. Local government folks sort of stopped and said, oh, wow. This is this is a big deal. Let's give this some careful thought. How are we gonna do this? It's a much you know, just like they faced a pandemic unlike anything they've ever seen. Now they're looking at a rescue package unlike anything they've ever seen.
Some something I think I may I may be hearing there is, you know, we we've all heard the the narrative that, you know, public trust has been declining, especially, like, over the course of the pandemic. I think something I hear kind of in the tone of what you're saying is that maybe that's something that's in the back of these community leaders' minds is, like, if I don't use this money wisely that that will erode that in my community. Is that is that something you think folks are giving a lot of mind to?
I I think it is. You have to put that in a in a context. The trust in government in The United States and really around the world has been declining for decades. It has been slowly eroding, for a long time. And trust in local government has always been more, you know, higher. You know, local governments, you know, something like 70% of folks, say that they have some or a lot of trust in local government compared to, say, 20% for state government and then about 10% for the federal government. And initially, in the pandemic, in the first three months of the pandemic, so through May '20, trust in local government actually went up. People saw local governments responding in ways that they approved of, and there was maybe a 10 or 20, increase. Now with all the controversy over again, over the masks, over the vaccine, over everything else, over the election, yes, trust is going back down. And it's doubly difficult because not only is there trust deficit between citizens and their government, but there's a huge trust deficit between citizens and their fellow citizens. You know? So it's, you know, in order to engage the community, there has to be a community. You know? And it's really it's when they're they're so fractured and so much antipathy, and not just partisanship in the old way, but outright hostility, you know, between members of your community. It makes it really, really hard. And so when you put that in the context of where they are now with the American Rescue Plan, local leaders are yes. They're looking for an opportunity to build credibility and build legitimacy, and show people that your local government can make changes that are good for you in the community. And so they're really focused on engaging community folks carefully around this money.
Another influence on how they choose to use it, I imagine, is gonna be the the intent that the federal government has. And I believe I saw if you go to, like, the treasury website, you can kinda see, like, what some of the kind of higher level funding objectives for the program are. Those include things like supporting COVID nineteen response efforts, replacing lost revenues that support public services and job retention. I think that was something you alluded to just before. Support for economic stabilization and addressing public health and economic challenges that have contributed to an unequal pandemic impact. What do these goals tell you and and others that are observers in the space about how the federal government is hoping this money gets spent?
I had a certain view, when the act was passed about how it would be spent. And I I I thought that, for example, those local governments that did spend down reserves would be able to replenish those reserves and do other kinds of things to restore sort of a structural balance, to their budget. But when the rules came out, the interim final rules in, May, May 10, it became clear that there was a different focus, than I would have imagined. And it's, got, I think, three components. One is they specifically aren't allowing you to put it back into the reserves. They want the money spent. They want it spent. They want it to they want it, to have an impact. So they want to see you do things with the money. The the second thing is is there is a real, serious, deep focus on social equity. And so they want you to look at your community through the lens of equity, and they would like to see you spending this money in ways that address, inequities. And then the the the third thing that came through to me, and and I sort of seized on this as a former performance auditor, is that there is a there is, an emphasis on performance reporting. So it's not just that they want you to report on the money and sort of show how you spend it so that it's, you know, spent legally, and so on. But they want to see an impact. They want you to report, how you changed lives in the community. And so that's and those are all good things. They want it spent, and they want it spent now. They want you to look at issues of social equity, and that's incredibly important. And they want you to report on your performance.
Something you mentioned there also stuck out to me, which was that goal around addressing the unequal impact that COVID's had, which I believe also means kind of trying to address systemic problems that lead to that. For example, you could look at a project in Chicago called mapping COVID recovery. It's this really neat thing where you can look at some mapping data that they use, where it shows some inequitable policies and their impacts that likely then also impact COVID. Whether you're looking at, like, shares of preexisting health conditions that happen in different parts of the city that then, for folks that aren't familiar with Chicago, geography very much strongly correlates to things like, race and socioeconomics. So those things have, like, real impacts then on how COVID hits. So when you see that there's larger infection rates in certain areas of the city, that kind of acts as a bit of a proxy as you're thinking about it. For other local governments and state governments that are looking to maybe try to address some of those things with these funds, how would you expect them to try and do that as as they're getting that infusion?
So, yes, COVID with disproportionate, death rates, for people of color, hugely disproportionate, highlighted, underlying trends, inequities throughout our government. And then with the murder of George Floyd, you know, there was this huge focus on police and the way that police interact with communities of color. But where we went from there is is that when we began to look at the impact of COVID and the, and the, police violence against communities of color, we began to see more clearly that throughout our governments, in almost every area of operation of government, we could find, social inequities in the way we issue permits. And, you know, you see things like, where are the heat islands? Where is the asthma? Where all all this kind of stuff. And and we've known that there have been, you know, what we call the social determinants of health, that there have been, disparate impacts on, you know, diabetes, asthma, and so forth and so on across all those, areas. But we are now focused on this, and we now see this as something that you really have to deal with if you're gonna make community better, really, for everybody. So there are two ways that governments need to look at this, I think. One is that they need to disaggregate data and look at you know, just what you described in Chicago. Take the data and look at it and disaggregate it across, you know, geography, ZIP code, census tract, as well as, you know, racial and ethnic groups and income groups. And the and the second thing is you need to talk to people. You need to you know, if I want as an older white man, if I want to know how my government impacts young black woman, I need to ask her. You know? And government needs to be in a position where it's carefully asking all the members of its community. And, of course, when you do that, you find wildly different perceptions and life experiences and so forth and so on. So look at the data and ask the people. And I guess I would add one third thing. Government is rapidly becoming, the workforce is rapidly becoming more diverse. And the diversity is coming, of course, in younger cohorts. You know? So we're, you know, people, the the the sort of class of folks who work in government, who are 25 to 35 years old, are more diverse than the thirty five to forty five and more diverse still than the forty five to fifty five and so on. Listen to those young people and let them bring their whole self to work. Don't ask them to look at their government and carry out their role as if they were a 55 year old white man. Ask them about their own experiences and let them bring their own, self into the into the work, and you will. You you will do a better job of being a good government.
That, that last point you make is is really interesting because that that also starts to get into the idea of, you know, what is your workforce culture in in your local government. And, you yourself, you've you've been, you know, the chief executive of a of a new municipality and you probably were thinking about, you know, what sort of culture am I propagating through my choices, through my actions, that sort of thing, and what what do I want it to be? As someone who's been in that role, how what advice would you give to to others in local government that maybe maybe they want to create the culture you're talking about where it's like, hey, like, I want folk you know, a diverse set of folks to be able to bring their whole selves so we get the benefit of their experiences, their their perspectives, the the life they've lived. Right? And in that way, effectively, it makes your government more representative. What what advice would you give those those folks?
Human resources, rules, and regs level, how are we recruiting? How are we screening? How do we decide who's a, quote, unquote, good fit or not? The journalist, Barrett Green, who I worked with a lot at, governing, just had a piece up on Route 50 a couple of days ago about the barriers that people of color have, faced in being hired by state and local government. So what are the barriers, and how how do they impact? And, you know, when when people say, oh, well, the pool of applicants just isn't, isn't right. What changed the pool of applicants? How are you deciding how that is? It requires real effort. This is something, you know, that you have to look at why are we not attracting the people that we want to attract. Hire them, promote them, recommend them, you know, nominate them, all all that sort of thing. I wrote a piece, about a year ago, about the, virtual absence of, black women city managers. You know? And the and the way to, to deal with that is to hold up the ones that are there, encourage them to hire other folks, and and and put them in positions of authority and power where they can impact the workforce, and they can hire more, entry level employees who are black women and allow them to be trained and promoted and moved up through the ranks and so on.
Another thing that you had mentioned when we were talking about the, cover relief package is this idea that there's performance reporting and that there's measures that I imagine they're gonna be looking to take essentially to try to say, hey, this money I spent, did it have the impact that I'm hoping for? And I imagine there's a lot of difficulties with that. Whether it's in, well, even picking what am I measuring? But then even beyond that, like how do I make sure I have the right data and then the right tools to use that data and then have those measures to then ostensibly make choices based on. So how do you think folks should, I guess, first of all, approach deciding on what measures are most helpful as they're kinda looking at that impact space?
When you're looking, you know, at measures, to me, you don't wanna look at, like, a dozen, you know, or two dozen. You want to hone in on a few. I used to tell people, there's a couple of measures in Kansas City that really we needed to focus on and that mattered a lot. One was the infant mortality rate. How does the infant mortality rate change in in the city by geographic area and by racial and ethnic group? Because it is a sort of a canary in the mine shaft that tells you all kinds of other things. So focusing on that, paying attention to that, why is it what it is? And and the other was, you know, I I'm a huge believer in surveying people and asking people and polling them and looking at social media and what they say and so on and so forth. And in Kansas City, I, did citizen surveys year in and year out as a city auditor and then as the mayor. And one of the most critical questions was how do you rate Kansas City as a place to raise children? Because if people don't think it's a good place to raise children, that's that's an indicator of lots of other problems. And it tells you, a a a good place to, I I actually wrote something when I was at governing called the stroller index, you know, which basically said, you know, how many people do you see pushing babies in strollers around your town? Because that tells you if it's a good place to raise a child, it's a good place to be an older person. You know, bad sidewalks are bad for strollers, but they're also bad for your average 80 year old. You know, they're bad for people in wheelchairs, and with walkers and so on and so forth. So looking at a few critical measures, and then going back to what I said earlier, disaggregate the data and ask people. You know, do a lot of different kinds of asking people and listening to people.
As a as one might seek to support the those measures that you're talking about, there's a lot of infrastructure that that can happen. Whether we're talking about, you know, having the technology to store information, whether we're talking about having the infrastructure to collect it, maybe it's to have the, like, folks with around to be able to do the research to, like, start to, like, talk to people. Maybe almost akin to the kind of user research maybe the tech folks that are listening to this might be accustomed to, but, you know that can apply to government as well. As as you mentioned, you know, sometimes you just you need to talk to people to figure out how things are impacting them. In your experience, what are what are some ways that folks can try to make good choices in order to ensure, like, that infrastructure is well supported, that the investments are there so that when it comes time to try to maybe I wanna collect some data to do one of these measures that things are ready for that.
Well, you know, you said investment. It is an investment. You know, it to me, it makes perfect sense to spend $5 out of every 100 to see how the other $95 work. And there are two, sort of fronts to, look at to make sure that that infrastructure is there. Lots of governments have some sort of office of performance improvement or data analysis or something like that, near the top of the government, reporting to the mayor or the city manager or something like that, that is a very good thing. You need to have that. That needs to be there, and it needs to have access across all of government. You know? So public works, police, parks, etcetera, etcetera. That sort of, you know, New York City at one time was a real leader in that, and that is that's critically important. But the second thing is is that you need to have, an independent city audit function doing performance auditing. I mean, I believed in that. You know, I wrote a book called Honest Competent Government, the promise of performance auditing. You need a third party to look at what you're doing, and and give you advice and suggestions, confirmation when you're doing it right, criticism when you're doing it wrong. But you you know? And and when you ask citizens in charter reviews and so forth and so on, referendums, do they want that? They do. So every every government needs to be sure that independent of the city manager and the mayor, there's a there's an audit function that can't look at performance, not just the financial data. We don't wanna just not steal the money. We'd actually like to spend it wisely.
In adjusting to the constraints of COVID, these governments we've been talking about have also had to learn how to use technical infrastructure in new ways in regards to communication, you know, keeping in touch with their constituents. Are there practices that you've seen out there that you think are working especially well?
Yeah. I mean, there's been actually a lot that has worked well. I mean, they they pivoted to virtual meetings almost overnight. They began to do, paperless kind of, permitting and so forth. Again, almost overnight. They set up first, COVID testing and so forth sites, then they set up, vaccination sites using technology. The, Pierce County, Washington, you know, set up a dashboard of, like, 94 different indicators, about how they were spending money, what they were doing, who was getting, tested, where the where the COVID was, and so on and so forth. So that's been there there there are sort of good news stories across local governments, about that. But it has come at a significant cost in terms of stress and effort. I heard today, about one government where they they went to the IT manager to ask them to set up another process, and the person burst into tears. You know, they're just too tired. They're just too much. And so so we've we've done really, really well. Many city managers and so forth that I talked to express really surprise and admiration for how agile their government turned out to be. They did things they did not realize they could do. But it's been hard, and we really have to focus now on supporting people, in in including, you know, the ways in which we ask them to come back to the office. You know? Those are all gonna be real difficult challenges.
Do you suspect that there will be any sort of rubber band effect with some of these things as, the in person restrictions relax where there might be this natural inclination to kinda just flip the switch back to how things were before the crisis. If so, do do you think government should try to push back and try to maintain some of the practices that they've learned?
There may be some sort of rubber band effect. No doubt there probably will be, but governments will push back. Their employees will push back. We're never going back to where we were in the before time. This is, you know, this is new. This is different. And we're gonna spend another year or two figuring out what the new normal is, but it's not gonna look anything like what it was at, the 2019.
The the tradition on civic tech chat is to have a space toward the tail end of our conversation so that the guest can give us an idea of what we should leave this conversation thinking about. So, Mark, for you and this chat we've had today, what would you say those concluding thoughts are?
I think that what I would like to lead people with is how important it is for every single person in a community to have some engagement and involvement with their local government. If you're not an employee, volunteer for a board, serve on on some commission. But we all have a responsibility. And you need so you you need to be engaged. You need to be involved. You can't stand off at a distance and say, well, you know, that doesn't impact me. You breathe the air, you drink the water, you walk the streets. It matters to you. It matters to the people that you love. Get involved.
Mark, thank you so much for joining us on Civic Tech Chat for this conversation. I I have no doubt that folks will, have some tidbits of wisdom in what you've said to take into their day.
Thank you. Pleasure to be here with you, Ron.
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