City Hall Stories

It’s not often in local government that you have the chance to define an entirely new role for a City. This is exactly what Chris Shorter is doing in Baltimore as its first ever City Administrator. Working closely with Mayor Brandon Scott, Chris is responsible for turning vision into reality and figuring out the nuts and bolts of creating a world-class city.Making this even more

Mayor Michael Hancock is one of the US’ most known Mayors. Having served Denver as an elected official for almost two decades, Mayor Hancock has seen perhaps the greatest transformation of any American city this century, with Denver exploding in growth, business and opportunity.Yet with that opportunity has come real challenges - housing, transit, public safety. Yet while Mayor H

Robert Clark recently returned from an illustrious FBI career in Los Angeles back home to Ohio, specifically to lead the City of Columbus’ public safety efforts.Like all other major cities in the US, the past two years has seen a worrying trend of increasing gun violence and homicides, undoing a decade plus of hard work in this area. But to Robert, the solution can’t be found i

Chief Brandon del Pozo is one of the leading thinkers in Policing. Following a long career with the NYPD, Chief del Pozo moved north to lead the Burlington Police Department. While there he oversaw a 50% reduction in opioid overdose deaths, pushed through key transparency initiatives and undertook multiple analyses on equity and use-of-force.Today, we discussed where policing is he

Tommy Gonzalez has earned the right to be called an all-star City Manager. Now leading the City of El Paso, Texas, Tommy has also managed in Lubbock, Dallas and Irving, earning awards for Performance Excellence along the way. His time in El Paso has seen it rise to one of the safest and well-run cities in the US, paying off debt while growing fund balances.When I asked him how this

When it comes to local government, it doesn’t get any bigger than Maurice Classen. Most recently the Chief of Staff for Mayor Lightfoot in the City of Chicago, Maurice’s role meant overseeing an $11 billion budget and 30,000 city staff, all the while managing the unique tensions of Covid and the George Floyd protests.With a background in prosecution and police strategy, Maurice

Meredith Reynolds is the Special Deputy City Manager for the iconic City of Long Beach, California. Handpicked in the middle of Covid to lead a unique team tasked with overseeing the City’s recovery, Meredith’s role ranges from community engagement, fiscal budgeting, operational management and more.I specifically enjoyed this conversation not only for the discussion on the time

Bridget Brennan is the Special Narcotics Prosecutor for the City of New York. Responsible for prosecuting major drug related crime that stretches over the City’s five boroughs, Bridget has experienced severe changes in the narcotics landscape since taking the role 2 decades ago.Today the country is being ravaged by Fentanyl, and New York is no different. Pouring in from Mexico, t

Today marks the second episode of our mini-series, inside New York City Hall.Greg Russ is the Chair and CEO of the largest public housing authority in the United States, the New York City Housing Authority. Impacting over a quarter of a million people, the ability of the Agency to provide safe and warm housing since 1935 has been critical to New York’s position as a cultural and

This is the first episode on a mini-series, specifically focusing on the fascinating and unique local government institution of New York City Hall. To kick things off, today we’re speaking to Mayor de Blasio’s recent appointee to lead the Office of Criminal Justice, Marcos Soler.Marcos brings an incredible background to the role, drawing on extensive academic work as well as ro