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Mayors Innovation Project
Contact: Satya Rhodes-Conway, Senior Associate [satya at cows.org]
The Mayors Innovation Project (MIP) is a learning network among American mayors committed to "high road" policy and governance: shared prosperity, environmental sustainability, and efficient democratic government. MIP participants believe that building high road cities and metropolitan regions is both good for their residents and a key way to move the country to the high road nationally. They also believe that, despite years of adverse federal policy, cities have enormous untapped assets and political strengths that can be organized better now. Already a leading source of policy innovation, cities can do more now to improve education and lifelong learning, promote high road economic and workforce development effort, expand housing and transit availability, develop the opportunities of the clean energy economy while combating climate change, and model advanced government administration. MIP exists to help its member participants lead by example, share their experiences with peers, and make this argument for cities nationally.
Participating MIP cities include megalopolises like Chicago, LA, and New York, large cities like Atlanta, Boston, Denver, Milwaukee, and Seattle, and smaller cities like Cincinnati, Des Moines, Portland, and Scranton. All told, representatives of more than 100 cities, representing some 33 million Americans in 37 states, have attended MIP events.
MIP helps its affiliated cities realize their promise through semi-annual meetings and ongoing connection to technical assistance. The meetings offer a unique opportunity for mayors and top staff to engage in sustained, peer-to-peer exchange on issues of concern to them. Each meeting is devoted to three or four big topics, selected in advance by the MIP steering committee of mayors. Experts are invited in for those topics, and mayors and top staff spend two days in intense informal discussion of them. After they go home, MIP connects interested mayors and staff to technical assistance they seek in implementing changes. We also run a moderated listserve alerting MIP cities to new developments and opportunities nationally.
Leadership
MIP was founded in 2005 by Madison WI mayor Dave Cieslewicz and Joel Rogers, the UW-Madison professor and director of COWS, the national high road service center, and the new Center for State Innovation (CSI). It is governed by a steering committee composed of Cieslewicz, Rogers, and a rotating group of mayors serving staggered two year terms. The current Steering Committee members are:
- Mayor Tom Bates, City of Berkeley, California
- Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, City of Madison, Wisconsin
- Mayor Frank Cownie, City of Des Moines, Iowa
- Mayor Heidi Davison, Athens - Clarke County, Georgia
- Mayor Chris Doherty, City of Scranton, Pennsylvania
- Mayor Pegeen Hanrahan, City of Gainesville, Florida
- Mayor-President Melvin "Kip" Holden, Baton Rouge - East Baton Rouge Parish, Lousisiana
- Mayor Bob Kiss, City of Burlington, Vermont
- Mayor Kitty Piercy, City of Eugene, Oregon
- Dr. Joel Rogers, Director of the Center on Wisconsin Strategy
Former Steering Committee members include Rocky Anderson (former Mayor of Salt Lake City), Rosemarie Ives (former Mayor of Redmond, WA), Pete Clavelle (former Mayor of Burlington, VT), Martin Chavez (former Mayor of Albuquerque), Heather Fargo (former Mayor of Sacramento), and Randy Primas (former COO of Camden, NJ).
Learn More
Presentations and other meeting materials from past MIP meetings are available at www.mayorsinnovation.org.