Robert McCartney:

Welcome to Think Regionally, a monthly podcast sponsored by COG, the region's association of local governments and planning organization. In her rotating position with a one-year term, Stewart chairs a board of 34 government officials, most of them elected from throughout the Metro area. She was recently elected to the Montgomery County Council after serving as Mayor of Tacoma Park. In our talk at COG headquarters just north of Union Station, Stewart said she'd like to see COG advance regional cooperation regarding issues such as adding more electrical vehicle charging stations, and reducing homelessness, which she noted is disproportionately experienced by African Americans. A year ago, your predecessor Christian Dorsey described four broad goals for COG for 2022. Those were climate, housing, transit, and equity. Those formed COG's Region United Plan Framework for 2030. So how would you summarize your goals for COG for 2023?

Kate Stewart:

Under the leadership last year, we moved forward in aligning our major strategies for the region in climate, housing, transportation, equity. Now, we need to make sure that we're actually implementing each of those strategies. And the role of COG is really to coordinate and assist local jurisdictions in moving that forward. And given the crisis we have with climate change and housing, we really need to accelerate those efforts.

Robert McCartney:

So let's talk about each of those individually a little bit. What kinds of things should we be looking for to make sure that there is progress being implemented in those areas?

Kate Stewart:

Well, we do what COG does best. We do our peer-to-peer education and sharing of ideas. We've already started that with our work with electric vehicle chargers and the efforts we're moving forward regionally on that, and we need to expand that in other areas as well. The second area is making sure that jurisdictions, particularly our smaller jurisdictions, have access to funding and the technical assistance they need to put these strategies into place. Under the current Biden Administration, there are a number of federal programs in which we can find funding for infrastructure projects and other things. And we need to make sure that all of our jurisdictions are availing themselves of that funding.

Robert McCartney:

I asked about Stewart's plans for housing as it is central to many, if not all of COG's goals. Adding more affordably priced housing, especially near public transit, addresses needs regarding the environment, transportation, economic development, and racial and economic equity. You also mentioned the crisis in housing. So what kind of things should we be looking for in terms of implementation regarding housing from COG this year in the region?

Kate Stewart:

Right. So we have our housing goals that we've been working on, and we need to be increasing supply of housing in the region. That includes addressing barriers to further development, looking at funding opportunities. We've seen that particularly with partnerships with Amazon and the funding that they've been able to provide for affordable housing in the region. In addition to supply, one of the things that we need to look at is making sure that people aren't displaced. At our first COG board meeting I was able to chair, we had a discussion of regional efforts regarding homelessness and how we're tackling that. And one of the things that was raised by the presenters is looking at our housing policies to make sure that people are able to stay in the homes they have now, so that we can avert increases in homelessness.

Robert McCartney:

In 2019, COG established a target of adding 32,000 housing units a year in the region. It aimed to lower rents and other housing costs and accommodate growth. But production has been falling short by 8,000 to 10,000 units a year, and that deficit is accumulating. The housing targets that were established by COG several years ago, we've not been meeting them. How can COG accelerate the implementation there? There's a lot of acceleration needed there.

Kate Stewart:

Absolutely, and that is one of the things that we're going to tackle this year and look at. We've had different jurisdictions that even though we are not necessarily meeting our regional goals, have been able to start addressing and increase development in certain areas. We need to intersect this with our work on the Equity Emphasis Areas and also looking at increasing development of housing around the high transit areas as well. But you're right, we've been not meeting our goals, and that's one of the things that we need to start discussing and looking at as a board.

Robert McCartney:

I asked Stewart about the need to overcome political disagreement and build consensus toward increasing housing density, especially around high capacity transit, like Metro stations. That has been shown to increase environmental sustainability, build equity, and reduce congestion among other benefits.

Kate Stewart:

Well, I think we move towards agreement exactly how you just mentioned. We have a housing crisis, we have a supply issue. Increasing supply of housing will help with our climate change goals, our transportation goals, as well as our equity goals. And I think having those conversations and continuing to talk to people about that will really be beneficial in moving us forward.

Robert McCartney:

We also discussed COG's role in addressing a looming challenge over the Metro system's budget. As you know, WMATA is warning that it will face a fiscal cliff within two years that could require a significant increase in public funding. Several years ago, COG helped coordinate adoption of dedicated funding for WMATA by the district, Maryland and Virginia. Would COG play a similar role in this coming debate?

Kate Stewart:

I think COG has a definite role to play when it comes to WMATA. We really advocated for and worked for the dedicated funding and really elevated the issue for the region and brought leaders together. I think in terms of moving forward, Metro is key to our region. It's key to our vision for transit-oriented communities as we are going back on economic development. What you hear from many, many businesses and industries that are looking to move places is how close can they be to any type of transit, and Metro is going to be key to that. It's also key to our climate goals and making sure that we can get more people on Metro and other types of transit.

Robert McCartney:

Stewart noted that supporting Metro is also key to COG's equity goals. She pointed to Equity Emphasis Areas, which are geographic locations with high concentrations of low income residents and racial minorities.

Kate Stewart:

We look at the Equity Emphasis Areas as one of the indicators, and there are that there's a higher proportion of people who take public transit, who live in the Equity Emphasis Areas. We need to make sure that those communities have reliable, safe means of transportation, and that means supporting Metro.

Robert McCartney:

Equity is at the center of COG's Region United Planning Framework with much of its work informed by and formulated around Equity Emphasis Areas. Stewart shared how Montgomery County has embraced this strategy in multiple ways.

Kate Stewart:

One of the things that Montgomery County used the Equity Emphasis Areas was to look at how to pinpoint where we were delivering services such as vaccine clinics. Testing was very important. In addition to that, there've been a number of instances such as there was a Shovel Our Sidewalks Act in Montgomery County that really looked at how our Department of Transportation clears snow in sidewalks and really looking at Equity Emphasis Areas and how we were responding to the need in those areas. It's been looked at everything from Purple Line Planning and how we're dealing with housing and in those areas to looking at our capital improvement budget.

Robert McCartney:

And the broad goal from COG of fighting racial inequities, this is something that underlies a lot of the different programs.

Kate Stewart:

It underlies everything. Looking at really undoing hundreds of years of racism and institutionalized racism in all of our systems takes a lot of time to combat. And equity needs to be center of all of the policies and programs that we're discussing. And again, as we saw in our first board meeting in January, discussing the issue of homelessness. We discussed how in the region, I think it was 70% or 75% of the people who are homeless in our region are Black or African American. And on average, it takes Black and African American families and individuals an extra two weeks to receive services. And that is holding constant other variables. So race is at that heart of that issue as it is with so many other issues that we're looking at.

Robert McCartney:

Two issues that Stewart wants COG to address this year are mental health and economic development. So you mentioned that you would like COG to focus on mental health. Well, what would you like to foresee for COG's advancements in that area in 2023?

Kate Stewart:

Yeah. So mental health has been an issue that was at a crisis level before COVID. And really with COVID, we've seen it become even more of an issue. Looking at this as a regional issue is going to be so important because we don't have enough beds right now for people who are suffering from mental health issues. Providers and having enough people who can actually provide the services we need is also at a crisis. And as we know in this region, we have some of the best colleges, universities, community colleges, hospitals, places where people can get this training. And so how do we incentivize folks to get into this field, and then keep them in this region?

Robert McCartney:

When it comes to economic development, COG's emphasis on regional cooperation helps to offset individual jurisdictions' instinct to compete with each other to attract corporate investment and jobs. What about economic development and workforce development? COG has had some initiatives on that in the past, especially in coming together to support the Amazon HQ2 bid, which, of course, Northern Virginia won, but the whole region won. So what are you looking for in terms of economic development and workforce?

Kate Stewart:

As we always say, we live in a region, and we have residents who live in one jurisdiction, work in another. We have great community colleges in each of our jurisdictions. And so we need to be looking more regionally at how we're attracting businesses here, so people can live and work much closer to home. I do believe as with the Amazon bids, that friendly competition is good amongst us, but to realize that if one of our jurisdictions is able to move ahead and attract an Amazon or another type of industry, that it really benefits our entire region. And so thinking about how we can really support each other and what are the places that we need to look at our workforce development. What are our colleges and community colleges and other programs really helping people look at pathways to jobs?

Robert McCartney:

Stewart's background led me to ask at the end about what is COG's value for local jurisdictions. So finally, what do you see as COG's primary benefits for area governments? I ask you because you have experience both with a smaller municipality, and now you're going to have a lot of experience with the larger county administration.

Kate Stewart:

Yeah. So COG's benefits is exactly that, but COG brings together smaller jurisdictions and larger jurisdictions. We bring together jurisdictions that are more urban and jurisdictions that tend to be more rural. Across the gamut, the diversity that we have in our membership really does benefit all of our members. It is that peer-to-peer learning, it is sharing of ideas and experiences, and then coming together to problem-solve. That is really going to help our region and help our residents.

Robert McCartney:

At the end, I share some personal thoughts. The agenda that Stewart outlined is broad and ambitious, but there are reasons to be optimistic. For one thing, there appears to be growing public support and understanding of the region's overall strategy of raising investments in housing affordability and transit, particularly in historically marginalized communities. I see three causes for the shift in sentiment. One is increasing public recognition that the region's overall success, economic and otherwise, depends on expanding the supply of affordably priced housing. It's both an equity issue and an economic imperative. Businesses can't attract quality job applicants if people are priced out of the local residential home market.

Robert McCartney:

Second, the nationwide racial reckoning following the George Floyd murder and related events has encouraged support for efforts to redress racial inequities. One result is that more jurisdictions are using COG's Equity Emphasis Areas to guide policy. Third, the need to combat climate change is encouraging greater reliance on transit and other less polluting transportation methods. On the critical issue of securing adequate funding from Metro, both COG and the region showed in an earlier debate that they can advocate effectively for the transit system, that for all its troubles, provides tremendous benefits and is the core of the region's transportation network. To support the transition away from fossil fuels, progress will continue with COG's help on building electrical vehicle charging stations throughout the region.

Robert McCartney:

Regarding economic development, COG and the region can build on the earlier success with Amazon and getting individual jurisdictions to sideline competition sufficiently to present a united regional front in attracting investments in jobs. Growing public interest in addressing mental health issues gives COG an opportunity for initiatives there. All in all, 2023 could fulfill Stewart's desire for what she called a year of accelerated action. I hope you've enjoyed this podcast. We welcome your feedback. Please email comments to thinkregionally, one word, @mwcog.org. This podcast is produced by Lindsay Martin and Steve Kania. Look for our next one on roadway safety in February. This is your host, Robert McCartney, urging everyone to Think Regionally.