Photographer: Jon Cherry/Getty Images

The U.S. Conference of Mayors prides itself on being a non-partisan organization; more than 1,400 city leaders, red and blue, convene regularly each year to decide what priorities to push on a national scale. Nevertheless, they’re embracing the White House’s shift in political hue as President Joe Biden takes over from Donald Trump, who sparred often, and very publicly, with the mayors of America. 

“Six months ago, many cities in America were being threatened with being branded ‘anarchic cities,’ federal funds being withheld,” Greg Fischer, the mayor of Louisville and president of USCM, told Bloomberg CityLab.  “Now the cities of America are part of the Biden transition effort.”

Last week, as he presided over the Conference’s virtual Winter Meeting, Fischer — a Democrat — discussed what makes American leaders hopeful, as well as their goals under Biden. His comments have been edited and condensed for clarity. 

CityLab: Can you walk us through the USCM’s reaction to President Joe Biden’s policy agenda, as laid out in these first executive orders? Both the conference’s reaction and then your reaction as a mayor?

Fischer: Gratification. Relief. Excitement. We’ve got a partner in the White House who thinks like a mayor. The mayors are in the reality business, and the reality of the stuff that he’s talking about are things that we’ve been dealing with now for months. He’s been very clear about his four priority areas of the pandemic, the economic crisis, the racial equity crisis and the climate crisis. Those are things that most every mayor is dealing with. Some are dealing with gun violence issues as well. He’s amplifying those with executive actions as well as policy statements, so we’re thrilled — we’ve got a president now who’s working with us like we’re partners. We’ve been pretty much on the outside for quite some time with the previous administration.

As president of USCM, you advocated for Congress to pass $350 billion in direct relief to states and cities. How much of that are you hoping will go to cities specifically, and has the Biden administration been receptive or prepared to meet that number?

We’re talking to them about it right now. Another important part of that is the relief comes direct to the cities; it needs to be flexible because all the cities have different needs. The first round only went to about 36 cities or so. We’ve got a lot of cities that are in real difficulties with their budgets right now, ironically, when we need our public resources more than ever. So they’re asking for all the input we have on that. (Note: Fischer ends his term as president in June.) 

Do you have a sense of how long cities can go without this relief we’re talking about?

Well, cities have got to balance their budgets, so what you’re seeing is just lots of layoffs. In the case of Louisville, we’ve got about 5,100 employees right now, direct employees. Two years ago, we had 5,600. Ten years ago, we had 6,100. So we just keep kind of narrowing down the services that we offer. People complain about it. But you’ve got to have a revenue source to back it up. And it’s been hurt by the pandemic, obviously.

Have you had to lay off any city employees in the past months because of the pandemic? (According to the National League of Cities, more than half-a-million local government employees had been laid off since February 2020, at least as of August.) 

We’re not replacing people that leave. Two years ago, we faced a downsizing that was not associated with the pandemic; it was more of a pension-related problem. We’re doing what it takes to run an efficient, balanced budget. But we need more services for our citizens, especially right now. We’ve got to swarm this pandemic with every resource we possibly have, especially with these new variants out right now that are spreading much more quickly — we need to do it obviously for health reasons. But the economy’s not going to open back up until people are safe and their families are safe.

Another priority you highlighted is resources  for states’ and cities’ vaccine rollouts. Where is the need greatest, and have budget shortfalls affected the speed of the rollout so far in Louisville and other cities in USCM’s network?

Well, in our case, we received some of the first round of CARES funding, and then also in our form of government, we’ve got a strong-mayor form of government, so the public health department is part of our government. (Note: In a "strong mayor" system, an elected mayor has direct administrative authority over the government and its departments.) We control a lot of things in our line of sight. We’ve got our mass vaccination site up. Our ability to vaccinate exceeds our supply, so supply is definitely the problem. Now, as we start filtering out into the community with multiple vaccination sites, we’re going to be running into a resource problem there. [It’s yet to be determined if we will] get help from the National Guard or these 100,000 public health workers that the Biden administration is going to [send out], but for the next — it seems like six to eight weeks — supply is going to be a problem. And once supply is really liberated, I think that’s when you’re going to start seeing where you have to have these other resources. But we can’t wait six to eight weeks to have them, right? We’ve got to have them set up so that they’re ready to go right now. Every day of delay on the vaccine is a day where more people are dying, and it’s just a drag on our country. 

Building on what you said before about seeing a partner in the White House — obviously there were instances where President Donald Trump fought with many of America’s mayors (Portland, Los Angeles, Seattle and D.C., to name just a few). Do you see this as an opportunity for a reset ?

If you looked in the dictionary and saw “understatement,” that might be a definition that you just put forth there, and you did it with a straight face, so congratulations on that. But — think about it. Six months ago, many cities in America were being threatened with being branded “anarchic cities,” federal funds being withheld. Now the cities of America are part of the Biden transition effort. And now we’re direct partners with the intergovernmental affairs efforts. They want feedback from us on ideas, what’s working, what’s not working, so that they can avoid those problems as they go to scale out on a national basis so — it’s night and day. And what’s so great about it is, it’s focused on the people. Democrats, Republicans, independents, Black, white, brown — it doesn’t matter. It’s focused on the team of America in all of its diversity, and how are we going to help the most people in a short amount of time.

You mentioned the prominence of city leaders in the Biden administration — it has two former mayors poised to assume cabinet positions (Boston’s Marty Walsh for Labor Secretary and Pete Buttigieg for  Transportation). What do you think that  will mean in terms of setting priorities in those departments and beyond?

It shows great wisdom from President Biden, because you want a variety of skills and knowledge in your cabinet. And sometimes what you see in high-level positions is, you see policy makers but they haven’t led or managed. Mayors lead and manage and they bring on-the-ground experience so that when you look at whatever a theory for improvement is or a national policy is, you’ve got to say, “is it feasible? And is it scalable?” And so you need to get bottom-up input as well as the top-down input. So you’ve got two very talented mayors there, Pete Buttigieg and Marty Walsh, that bring different life experiences to it. There just can be a real wonderful benefit to the country and to his administration, and he should put more mayors in positions of high responsibility because we’re proven problem solvers and know how to get things done. At the end of the day, that’s what America is really starving for — get things done. 

In the past, the USCM highlighted infrastructure as a major priority. Now,  fighting coronavirus seems to be the most urgent one. What other priorities are you alerting the Biden administration to in the coming days and weeks?

The pandemic is the gateway to everything. Until that’s solved, nothing else is going to really scale up. We’re hopeful in the near term to hear some type of infrastructure plan as well. Our country is woefully non-competitive with infrastructure compared to most of our foreign competitors. And infrastructure is good jobs. So we need good living-wage-type jobs that our infrastructure plan will put together. If you take his recent $1.9 trillion American rescue plan and the infrastructure plan, you put those together, that’s going to get our economy out of this recession as well, and get our unemployment numbers way down. And then of course through each one of these, especially infrastructure, you can bring climate into that to make sure we’re doing all this in a responsible, green way. We really missed the boat these past four years not embracing climate and green-energy-type jobs. Those were jobs of the future, they’re good-paying jobs. We’ll get back on track with the Biden administration.

Looking at  Biden’s priorities in terms of what he enacted through executive orders —  is there anything you feel is missing in terms of support for cities like yours?

We’ve seen the [executive order] plan that he’s got over the [first] 10 days, and it’s a wonderful start to get us back on track and to get us unified again. There’s no one pathway to perfection, but we couldn’t be more pleased with how they’re starting and what they’re planning to do, and how they’re involving not just mayors but governors and the people of America in what they’re doing as well. So our key thing is, let’s work together. If things aren’t perfect, just say, “Here’s how I can help. Here’s an idea.” But quit spewing any type of hatred or negativity. Let’s work together. There’s an awful lot that we can work on, that we can agree with, and mayors are going to be at the forefront of that.