According to Time magazine, Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper is one of the nation's "5 Best Big-City Mayors." Most of the section on Hick deals with his work handling Denver's tight budget:
Our top performers range from Chicago's imperial Richard Daley, who after 16 years is widely viewed as the nation's top urban executive, to newcomer John Hickenlooper, the beer brewer who closed Denver's worst budget gap ever without major staff or service cuts. Since good policy invites imitation, their most successful tactics may soon be coming to a city near you.
How does good press affect whether or not Hick will run for governor? Who knows? But it's about the best press you could get for free, and certainly doesn't hurt his mystique. To read the rest of the excerpt on Hick, click below.
John Hickenlooper / Denver
Able Amateur
When John Hickenlooper ran for mayor of Denver in 2003, the betting
in local political circles was that he should keep his day job,
brewing beer. A Democratic civic activist, Hickenlooper was best
known for owning the Wynkoop Brewing Co., the city's first brewpub,
which he had opened in 1988 and built into a successful restaurant
business. He had never run for office, not even for student council
of his high school or college, Wesleyan, at which he earned degrees
in English and geology. He also seemed a bit eccentric. As a
bachelor, he offered a $5,000 bounty to anyone who could find him a
bride and went on the Phil Donahue Show to discuss the contest (he
eventually married in 2002). Geeky and lanky, he sported a boyish
haircut and during primary debates cited intellectual tomes like The
Rise of the Creative Class. For all his talk of balancing the budget
and reforming the schools, he also harped on a prosaic matter:
overpriced parking meters.
That Hickenlooper, 53, cruised to victory may suggest that Denver
citizens would vote for anyone who promised cheap parking (a pledge
on which he delivered). But after 19 months in office his honeymoon
still isn't over. Not only do 75% of voters in metro Denver approve
of his job performance, but 61% of folks in the region, including the
Republican-leaning outlying suburbs, rate the mayor favorably as
well, according to a new poll. Asked to explain his popularity,
Hickenlooper fumbles for an answer. "I try not to gloss over
reality," he says. "If I don't know the answer, I'll say that."
What he's reluctant to say is that he dispensed with the partisan and
sometimes imperious manner of past Denver mayors to accomplish quite
a bit during his brief tenure. When Hickenlooper, who is called Mayor
Hick, took office in July 2003, he inherited a $70 million budget
deficit, the worst in city history. He eliminated the shortfall
without major service cuts or layoffs, convincing city employees that
they should accept less pay and instituting mandatory leave days (he
slashed his salary 25%). Bucking the wisdom that you don't take on
city-hall unions, he pushed for an incentive-based compensation
system for public employees, which voters approved in 2003. And in
his biggest score, he won approval for a $4.7 billion mass-transit
plan, which involved persuading voters, along with about a dozen
mayors in seven regional counties, to back a sales-tax hike.
Hickenlooper's honeymoon has not been without flare-ups. Before he
took office, Denver's police department had been facing public
criticism over allegations that officers were using excessive force.
Hickenlooper appointed a task force to look into the matter and
recently nominated a civilian monitor to oversee and critique
internal police investigations. Civil-liberties groups complain that
the civilian monitor lacks enforcement authority.
But with the Denver economy recovering, the police controversy
doesn't seem to have dampened enthusiasm for the mayor, a colorful
guy who rides around on an Aprilia scooter and once suggested that
employers earmark a percentage of their payroll to buy local artwork.
"If I make a mistake, I'll apologize," says Hickenlooper. So far, no apologies seem necessary. —By Daren Fonda.
I would like to say that I am goung through a rough time and because I don't have kids or am old I can't get assisstance in any thing. I've been in college but had to set that aside I;ve lost a good job but do day labor and live in a bug infested motel that I pay for daily. I could not even get food stamps, that is sorry if you ask me. I'm trying to get on my feet I don't drink or do drugs, so why can't I get the help I think I need? Well a pretty poor system if you ask me
I need housing assistance and food how hard is that. I don"t have the millions of kids or what.
Posted by: Deanna Balerio | August 22, 2006 at 12:22 PM