Bruce Katz is one of the most prominent commentators on cities and urban policy in America. A former Chief of Staff of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, he heads The Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program and its varied research agenda on the challenges facing America's metropolitan regions. Katz has been in the trenches of urban policy making in the executive and legislative branches of government, and his informed commentaries are frequently featured on op-ed pages across the country.
On November 12, 2004, alumni, friends and donors attended the ceremonial groundbreaking for the new home of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, Joan and Sanford Weill Hall (see photo). Construction of the $34 million building is now officially underway – and the promise of a magnificent academic facility is literally coming to life. Over 450 guests attended the groundbreaking, including Ford school alumni from as far back as the Class of 1953, current students, President and Mrs.
In recognition of Earth Day, please join us for a very special lecture about what it takes to pass historic air quality legislation. Margo Oge served at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for 32 years, the last 18 of which she directed the Office of Transportation Air Quality. Ms. Oge led the Obama Administration’s landmark 2012 Clean Air Act deal with automakers, the nation’s first action targeting greenhouse gases. This regulation will double the fuel efficiency of automakers’ fleets to 54.5 mpg and cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2025.
Annenberg Auditorium
Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy
Free and Open to the Public. Presenting: Mark Funkhouser, Director, Governing Institute, Former Mayor of Kansas City, MO Abstract "The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do, for themselves in their separate and individual capacities." - Abraham Lincoln Government exists to produce positive outcomes in the community and those outcomes are "co-produced" by government and citizens working together. Every citizen has p
Paul and Nancy O'Neill Classroom (1230), Weill Hall
What are the ramifications of partisan drawn districts that favor one party over another? Is there a better and fairer way to do this? What are the alternatives? This presentation, hosted by the League of Women Voters of the Ann Arbor Area, will explore how legislative lines are drawn in Michigan, who draws them and why it is a critically important question for those concerned about fair representation.
Vivian Thomson will offer an insider’s account of how power is wielded in environmental policy making at the state level. Drawing on her experience as a former member of Virginia’s State Air Pollution Control Board, she narrates cases in Alexandria, Wise, and Roda that involved coal and air pollution. She identifies a “climate of capitulation” —a deeply rooted favoritism toward coal and electric utilities in state air pollution policies. Thomson links Virginia’s climate of capitulation with campaign finance patterns, a state legislature that depends on outsiders for information and bill drafting, and a political culture that tends toward inertia. She extends her analysis to fifteen other coal states and recommends reforms aimed at mitigating ingrained biases toward coal and electric utility interests.
OverviewThe goal of this conference is to provide school district leaders and EPIresearchers an opportunity to exchange ideas and to brainstorm about potential collaborations. Researchers will present case studies of academic studies that have been conducted in collaboration with school districts, with a special focus on the research process.
The United States has seen dramatic growth in energy development with much of it occurring on privately owned lands, creating a unique raft of opportunity and risk for landowners. The presentation reviews research on the nexus of property ownership rights and regulatory policy, with a focus on Shale and Wind Energy. It introduces the concept of 'Private Participation' in the planning and siting of energy projects and discusses how private property ownership will continue to influence the energy revolution.
CLOSUP Lecture Series,
Conversations Across Differences
Please join us in a Conversation Across Difference, as Professor Teodoro discusses alternative ownership and management models for water and sewer utilities, as well as the political dimensions of public, private, and public-private partnerships (P3s), and what they mean for cost and quality.
The U.S. is in the midst of an energy transition. This path toward decarbonization of the energy sector promises many societal benefits such as reduced greenhouse gas emissions, technological innovation, and reduced air pollution. The costs of this transition such as price spikes or job displacement, however, are not evenly spread across the population, since some individuals and communities are more vulnerable to the adverse impacts than others. In this presentation, I will introduce a framework for conceptualizing vulnerability and then provide an illustration of its potential application using the case of the renewable portfolio standard. I will also present findings from interviews and focus groups with individuals that reside or work within more vulnerable populations. These findings provide insights about the manner in which communities perceive of the energy transition, and how they cope with changes introduced by the transition.
CLOSUP Lecture Series,
Gilbert S. Omenn and Martha A. Darling Health Policy Fund
Free and Open to the Public Frank J. Thompson, Professor, School of Public Affairs and Administration, Rutgers University-Newark. Author of Medicaid Politics: Federalism, Policy Durability, and Health Reform With Commentary provided by: Scott L.
Free and open to the public.Students of PUBPOL 456/756 invite the public to join them for a debate featuring candidates for the offices of mayor and city council in Ann Arbor. This event takes place as a product of PUBPOL 456/756. It originated and is planned, organized, and moderated by the students of the Ford School’s Public Policy Course 456/756 under the supervision of their instructor, former Mayor of Ann Arbor John Hieftje. Final details are pending on which candidates will participate, and will be announced here as soon as possible.
Professor Tuohy will speak about her new book, Remaking Policy: Scale, Pace and Political Strategy in Health Care Reform (University of Toronto Press 2018). The book presents a new theoretical framework for addressing perennial questions about the drivers of policy change. It argues that the scale and pace of major policy change - change that alters the balance of power, the methods of control or the organizing principles of a policy arena – are fundamentally driven by political calculations at the centre of government, as political actors assess their ability to overcome vetoes not only in the present but also over time. The book develops this argument by drawing on ten cases of health policy change across seven decades (1945-2017) and four nations (the United States, Britain, the Netherlands and Canada). In her talk Prof. Tuohy will pay particular attention to the American cases, showing why the US is especially prone to “mosaic” bursts of simultaneous small-scale changes, and why both “big-bang” (large scale, fast paced) and “blueprint” (large scale, slow paced) strategies have proved elusive.
Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy
Betty Ford Classroom
Richard Buery is President/CEO of The Children's Aid Society. Founded in 1853, CAS serves 80,000 children at 45 locations in New York City and Westchester, and its Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Program and National Center for Community Schools serve thousands more nationally. Mr.
Abstract The case for a national effort to create core standards grows stronger by the day. Currently, 50 states have 50 standards, and most states are setting the bar as low as possible in order to comply with the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) requirements of NCLB. Half the states have set fourth-grade reading benchmarks so low that they fall beneath even the most basic level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
While much attention has been focused on the threats that hydraulic fracturing poses to water systems—whether by its consumptive use of freshwater or the risk of contaminating ground- and surface waters—the financial wealth that oil and gas development brings to state and local governments may provide opportunities to protect water resources. This diverse group of scholars will discuss their research at the intersection of fracking and water policy, and as a panel explore whether there are particular policies or practices that might be scaled-up or replicated outside their geographical area of study to create more sustainable energy-water systems.
CLOSUP Lecture Series,
Policy Talks @ the Ford School
Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy
Annenberg Auditorium
Free and open to the public. Auditorium doors will open at 3:30 PM on March 19. This event will be live web-streamed; a link to the web-stream will be posted here on the day of the event at least 30 minutes prior to the start time.
Vann R. Newkirk, II, Staff Writer at The Atlantic will highlight the ways in which democracy and the ballot have been curtailed historically and in the present for people on the margins of society, including post-Jim Crow and post-Shelby County v. Holder legal developments on gerrymandering and voter ID.
Carl Simon, director of the University of Michigan Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program, moderates this panel on transportation policy featuring Peter Sweatman, UM's Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI); Matthew Naud, City of Ann Arbor; and Shannon Bouton, McKinsey Center for Business & Development.
The “Michigan’s Municipal Water Infrastructure: Policy Choices and Issues” conference is being sponsored by a consortium of universities across the state, with the hope of bringing a voice of academic research and analysis to the topic of municipal water policy in the state (particularly relevant in the face of the crisis in Flint). Faculty will present on a range of issues: from water supply engineering issues to municipal funding needs to health and environmental impacts to state and federal regulation.For more information and to register, please visit http://events.anr.msu.edu/MMWI/ This conference is free, however space is limited so please register early to secure your spot.
Join Domestic Policy Corps (DPC) and the Center for Local, State and Urban Policy (CLOSUP) for a panel discussion with a generation of Michigan governor transition leaders from 1991 to today.
This talk will explore policies such as taxation, disclosure and regulation of drilling processes in a comparative manner across the states and municipalities on the Marcellus shale play.
The Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy (CLOSUP) will host a private screening of the documentary titled Black and Blue: The Story of Gerald Ford, Willis Ward, and the 1934 Michigan-Georgia Tech Football Game. The screening is open to ALL Ford School students, staff, and faculty. Pizza and soda provided.
The Obama Administration’s EPA created a stir when it recently proposed widely varying state carbon-intensity targets to be achieved by 2020 and permanently by 2030. Dr. Engel will discuss a recent paper that examines the bases for federal allocation, among the various states, of the greenhouse gas emissions reductions needed to meet federal air pollution standards under the Clean Air Act.
****Watch the video**** Free and open to the public. Abstract The federal Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) is the premier national example of a non-regulatory environmental policy, and it illustrates well both the potential and limitations of using information disclosure to achieve policy goals. The TRI was adopted in 1986 as an amendment to the federal Superfund law, and since 1988 we have had annual reports on the release of over 650 toxic chemicals by some 20,000 industrial facilities around the nation.
Reception and book signing following the program. Free and open to the public. Panelists: Scott Cannon, son of author James Cannon Captain James M. Cannon IV, son of author James Cannon Moderator: Barry Rabe, J. Ira and Nicki Harris Family Professor of Public Policy and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Environmental Policy, Gerald R.
This event will be held at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC
The Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy (CLOSUP) invites our Washington DC colleagues to attend a discussion hosted by the Wilson Center/Canada Institute featuring CLOSUP Director, Barry Rabe, and our collaborating National Surveys on Energy and Environment (NSEE) partners, Christopher Borick, Director, Muhlenberg Institute of Public Opinion, and Erick Lachapelle, Assistant Professor, University of Montreal. The discussion will feature findings from the FALL 2015 round of ongoing survey work in both Canada and the US. Key themes will include public views on whether climate change is occurring, response to a range of possible policy options across levels of government, and reaction to Pope Francis' recent engagement on the issue. The U.S. portion of the survey will also include an early look at how Americans want their states to respond to the new Clean Power Plan. The session is free but requires registration. Please call 202-691-4000 or email [email protected] to reserve your seat.
