Rob Gurwitt

Recent Articles

• Ray Nagin: Creole Crackdown
• Oct 1, 2002
• Ever since the July day when Mayor Ray Nagin announced that 84 arrest warrants had been issued in a massive campaign against public corruption, New Orleans has been a changed city.

• Larry Salci: Transforming Transit
• Aug 1, 2002
• Sometimes in public life, the best politician for the job may not be a politician. That, at least, is the gamble that St. Louis-area public transit is taking with Larry Salci.

• Betting on the Bulldozer
• Jul 1, 2002
• If Philadelphia can just clear away the rubble of its abandoned buildings, whole new neighborhoods might spring up. But it will cost a fortune, and there's no guarantee it will work.

• Mee Moua: Breaking In
• Jun 1, 2002
• No one could accuse Mee Moua of lacking political courage. This spring, just weeks after the Democrat won a special election to the Minnesota Senate, she jumped feet-first into an emotional debate over whether the state ought to mandate reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in schools.

• Mysteries of Urban Momentum
• Apr 1, 2002
• Thirty years ago, Minneapolis and St. Paul were hot. Now they're not. Local leaders are trying to figure out why.

• George Zoffinger: Shaking the Stadium
• Apr 1, 2002
• George Zoffinger has never had much trouble telling people what he thinks. "Sometimes," says a friend and colleague, "we cringe."

• John McKay: The Tax Man Cometh
• Feb 1, 2002
• An election year is a notoriously awkward time to push contentious legislation. Why irritate powerful special interests--let alone some portion of the electorate--when your colleagues want everything to be as calm as possible?

• The Massachusetts Mess
• Dec 1, 2001
• Politics has always been rough in the Bay State. These days, though, meanness sometimes seems like an end in itself.

• Shirley Franklin: Old Hand, Fresh Appeal
• Dec 1, 2001
• For someone who grew up in Philadelphia, Shirley Franklin has the perfect Atlanta pedigree. That may explain why she managed a few weeks ago to win the city's mayoralty without a runoff, and will take office next month as Atlanta's first female chief executive.

• Thomas M. Menino: Main Street Maestro
• Nov 1, 2001
• Winning with commerce

• Kathleen Sebelius: Believer in Balance
• Nov 1, 2001
• Taking consumers seriously

• Gerald Gordon: Without Gimmicks
• Oct 1, 2001
• Local economic development efforts operate according to two broad assumptions. If you're going to have a separate development arm, the thinking goes, it should be a public-private partnership. And if it's going to compete successfully, it has to have a bundle of direct incentives--especially tax write-offs--to throw at businesses.

• Black, White and Blurred
• Sep 1, 2001
• Race is still an issue in big-city politics. It's just not THE issue anymore.
• 1 Comments

• Webs of Authority
• Aug 1, 2001
• Perhaps because their experience with online government is so new, local governments remain unsure of how to make room for it within their organizations. In many--probably in most--it remains the domain of information technology staff. But this, says Byron West, Denver's director of television and Internet services, "is like trying to steer the ship from the engine room."

• Richard Howorth: Bibliocrat
• Aug 1, 2001
• In 1979, Richard Howorth moved back to Oxford, Mississippi, to open a bookstore. He had more than simple commerce in mind. Oxford was home to the University of Mississippi and William Faulkner's native turf, yet it remained a cultural backwater, remembered around the country, if at all, as the site of anti-desegregation riots in the early 1960s. Howorth, who'd grown up in Oxford, saw his store as a place of culture, literacy and broad-mindedness that could help the town nurture those values in itself.