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I spent Friday last week on the top floor of a New York City building that has $850 billion of gold in its basement - the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
I was in a room with about seventy investors, public servants, nonprofit leaders, and foundation staff to brainstorm ways that successful community-based antipoverty and pro-family flourishing programs can generate direct economic benefits that can be purchased in a marketplace.
It’s called Investing In Flourishing, and our own Brooklyn Park ENOUGH initiative is one of three pilots. I’ve written about this before, and you’ll hear much more when we convene a group locally to move the effort forward. But for now I’ll just have to say that this old community organizer whose career began with anti-redlining campaigns targeting banks with the Community Reinvestment Act was truly inspired. The fact that the Federal Reserve Bank leadership understands that capitalism as we know it is failing whole communities, and that they are actively working to fix it, gives me hope.
With some help from AI, we believe that the return on investments in programs like Brooklyn Park ENOUGH can be measured and predicted. Whether it’s private investment, philanthropy, government, or a combination of all three that foots the bills, the success of this work at scale could move us past political scapegoating and open the doors to family-centered economic growth, built from the bottom up.
Speaking of investing, the auditor’s review of our FY27 budget proposal went very well this week. There were no cost savings identified in the operating budget and only a half million in the capital budget. We take that as evidence that our budget was already lean and efficient. But that doesn’t mean the County Council won’t impact the final outcome.
The next step is to work with Council members on amendments and a supplemental package. It’s been a collaborative process so far, and I am confident that it will remain that way.
Wednesday was a celebration of Older Americans Month. Our Department of Aging and Disabilities hosted hundreds of the regulars from our eight senior centers at the Pip Moyer Recreation Center in Annapolis for dancing, entertainment, and lunch. And I had the honor of introducing to them the former County Executive who I most admire - County Executive Janet Owens.
She ran and won as an outsider south county farm girl who knew government from the inside and wanted to help people. She was a former Director of the Department of Aging and Disabilities, and when I sought her advice before running myself, she made me promise to take care of that department. When I look at the facilities and the team in place today, I can say with confidence that I kept that promise.
On Wednesday evening, I spent an hour with our Citizen’s Environmental Commission. They pressed me to finish strong, and to do more to protect our fragile ecosystems. They had some good ideas, so we’ll get to work on them. There’s always more to do.
But on Thursday morning, I found myself telling stories about the progress we’ve made on those very same issues to a delegation of environmental policy leaders from Japan.
Dr. Masayuki Komatsu of Ecosystem Research Institute told us that he struggles to gain public and political support for Nature Based Solutions, things like the living shorelines and stream restorations that Anne Arundel County has used to meet our watershed implementation plan goals.
I told him that when he first visited our county in 2015, we were in the midst of a partisan battle over funding for restoration projects. Republicans called it the rain tax and opposed it. Democrats called it the stormwater fee and supported it. Today, I volunteered, even Republicans support the restoration projects being built with the program’s funds, because voters in their districts are directly involved in the planting and the advocacy, and they see the results.
“Human beings love nature and want to protect it,” I told him. “Once they see what can be done, they’ll want more. The politicians will follow.”
He lit up. “It’s inside of us. We are made of nature!”
I got the sense from Dr. Komatsu and his delegation that they felt very far behind us, as we bragged about our successes. So I told him that many of us had visited Sweden and felt the same way. We’re all ahead in some areas and behind in others. That’s why it’s so good to do these trips. If we all catch up with each other, the world will be a much better place.
Until next week…