Executive Director's Column

The summer of 2010 continues here in Washington with the BP oil gusher dominating the news. But there is the announcement today that the nation’s deficit is at one trillion dollars. President Obama’s Deficit Commission Chairs, Former Senator Alan Simpson and former Clinton aide Erskine Bowles, carried the concern about the deficit to the Governors’ Annual Meeting this past week in Boston.
Deficit talk is something we have heard before and when we have heard it in the past, it sometimes means that there will be proposals to cut domestic spending. We must be ready to defend out current priority programs such as CDBG if the budget cutters start a move to cut our programs.
This atmosphere will require mayors to focus and develop a political strategy to protect CDBG and other key domestic programs from deficit hawks that are already starting to circle above us.
At our Leadership Meeting in September here in Washington, President Kautz will discuss this challenge and together our leadership team will adopt and implement a strategy to protect our federal funding that is needed more than ever during this economic downturn.
National HIV/AIDS StrategyThis week, the Administration announced its own National HIV/AIDS Strategy. It was 30 years ago when the AIDS epidemic hit America and it was the mayors who stood up to educate and do their best to change human behavior by discussing the need for safe sex practices. No one wanted to discuss the issue back then. There was great fear. It was a defining moment of The U.S. Conference of Mayors as we led the way to provide awareness and understanding. Everyone then thought that the AIDS issue only affected our cities but the fact was that when rural and suburban residents got AIDS they came to our cities to be treated. The movie star Rock Hudson’s death was key to President Reagan being aware of this epidemic. Reagan’s Surgeon General C. Everett Coop worked with our mayors and urged them to be vocal and to support sex education for children at the age of nine.
In 1988 at our Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City, we had the AIDS quilt displayed and a person dying of AIDS came and addressed the mayors.
In the 2003, I, along with our USCM President Hempstead Mayor James Garner, led a delegation of mayors to South Africa, Namibia, Swaziland, and Uganda to share best practices with African mayors. It was a four-nation tour with four teams of American mayors hitting each of the nations.
This week’s announcement from the Administration encourages statewide HIV/AIDS plans. From the announcement and what I watched on C'span, I do hope mayors and their health officers will be involved. We can help the Administration with this effort. We have a history and it is a fact this issue is, and continues to be, a priority for cities. We applaud the announcement this week and want to know about how we can help the Administration develop their state plans to ensure that cities, both large and small, are included in the development of this new national plan.
USCM Leadership Meeting, September 22-24, Washington, D.C.President Kautz, Vice President Villaraigosa, and 2nd Vice President Nutter all need our leadership mayors to be with us here in DC, September 22-24.
Mid-term elections will be before us, budget cutters will be in front of us and a consensus on transportation and immigration policy and the fate of our energy block grants will require your renewed focus and new political energy to help our President as she leads us forward.
Please arrange your schedule to be with us September 22 to 24. You are needed here now more than ever. Together we can make a difference for our cities and the people all of you serve.