Editor’s Note: Capitol Gains is a member of the ImpactAlpha Podcast Network. The show is made possible by Court Street Group.
Local governments accountable to everyday citizens may be the antidote to dysfunction in Washington.
“Local government still works. They’re solution-oriented. They’re bipartisan,” says Utah’s Ben McAdams on the first episode of Capital Gains, a biweekly podcast from myself, Matt Posner of Court Street Group, and James McIntyre, a municipal affordable housing and clean energy finance expert, that untangles the threads of policy, politics and money in pursuit of a more engaged citizenry.
“Right now, the focus needs to be on enabling the states and the local governments, the metros, to be our solution and hope that that trickles up,” McAdams says. Capitol Gains is the newest addition to the ImpactAlpha Podcast Network.
McAdams is the former mayor of Salt Lake County and the last Democrat from Republican-dominated Utah to get elected to the US Congress. He now leads Putting Assets to Work, where he helps local governments unlock billions from underutilized public land for community benefit (for context, see, “Ben McAdams: Marrying public real estate and private capital”).
Talented people at the state and local level, McAdams says, “are part of the cavalry and part of the solutions to American problems.”
Innovation labs
Local governments are the kind of laboratories needed at the federal level. We need “a regulatory regime that demands accountability, but allows for flexibility and local autonomy,” McAdams says.
The Biden Administration’s bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act are “incredibly transformative,” but national dysfunction is stifling innovation, he says. “I would rather see the electric cars of the future, the digital currencies of the future, built and regulated by the United States, not China.”
From Dreamers seeking a path to citizenship, to permitting reform to enable the energy transition – “all of these things are so important, not only for the prosperity of everyday Americans, but for the national security and the interest of democracy on the global stage.”
In his role as mayor, McAdams says he had no choice but to solve problems. To do that as a Democrat in a Republican state, he built personal relationships with those with his colleagues across the aisle and preferred compromising over losing.
Saying it’s better to lose than compromise is a privilege local leaders don’t have, says McAdams. “My values are solving problems, not being unwilling to bend and compromise.”
Matt Posner is a principal at Court Street Group.
James McIntyre is an expert in municipal, affordable housing, and clean energy finance. The opinions expressed in his writing or any other media publication are his own and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer or any affiliated organizations.
