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    Interview: Andrew Ginther, Candidate for Mayor

    With the Columbus primary election approaching on May 5, Columbus Underground has wrapped up a series of interviews with each candidate for mayor. Current City Council President Andrew Ginther was the last candidate to be interviewed, agreeing to sit down and talk with CU at his German Village campaign headquarters on Thursday.

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    Jesse Bethea: Why do you want to be mayor of Columbus?

    Andrew Ginther: You know, Columbus is a special place. It has given a lot to me and my family, born and raised in Columbus, graduated Columbus City Schools and grew up in our parks and rec centers and got to enjoy all the great amenities and quality of life here as a child and so a lot of what drives my public service both as a former board member, council member and hopefully our next mayor is a sense of obligation, commitment to give back to a community that’s given me so much and also making sure that my daughter and other kids in this community get to grow up in a great Columbus.

    JB: So what would you say is your proudest accomplishment on City Council?

    AG: Wow. There are a lot. But I would probably say, greatest accomplishment I believe, and one of the most important things that took place in this city in recent memory is the way that the private sector, public sector, neighborhood community leaders came together when our city faced a crisis back in 2009.

    It wasn’t just about asking for more taxes, we committed to reforming city government, making an unprecedented investment in economic development, prepare for the future by restoring our rainy day fund balance which we had almost completely depleted between 2001 and 2009, two recessions and obviously the meltdown of 2008. And what was so unique about it, there are so many communities around the country where folks would have blamed one another, where there would’ve been fighting, there would’ve been resentment, anger.

    I mean think about the fact that we had the guts to put the issue on the ballot in the first place back in 2009. If you remember back it certainly was the greatest recession of my lifetime that I can remember as a professional, and probably for our parents as well. People had lost jobs, they were in danger of losing jobs, they were gonna be transferred if they wanted to keep their jobs, people were losing their homes, I mean it was a scary, scary time. But the people of Columbus felt like this city was pretty special, and it was worth protecting and investing in.

    Community and government leaders around the country thought we were absolutely crazy to ask people to actually pay more to protect and invest in the quality of life in Columbus. But as always, the voters of Columbus responded and chose their future, but they also asked us to reform city government. We said we’d work with our collective bargaining units through the collective bargaining process and save $100 million by 2020. We’re on track to save $144 million based on working with our employees to figure out ways we can things more efficiently and effectively but also ask them to pay more towards their healthcare and retirement just like other public employees.

    We also said we’d restore the rainy day fund, get it up to $75 million balance by 2018, we’re actually on track to get that done by 2017, which is important, when you have a sized budget the city of Columbus does, to have roughly 10 percent of that set aside for difficult economic times. We know they’re coming, we don’t know when, but as we discovered between 2001 and 2009, when they come, you need to be ready. And it also helps us maintain the triple-A bond rating with all three rating agencies. We’re the largest city in the country to have triple-A with all three agencies, and it saves tax payers about $24 million annually on interest based on having those impeccable credit ratings.

    JB: From your time especially leading City Council, what are some lessons that you think you’ll take from that position to the mayor’s office if you’re elected?

    AG: Well, mayors are only as good as their councils, and it’s important for the mayor to have a good relationship with the legislative branch. I’ve enjoyed a fantastic partnership and relationship with the Mayor, we’ve been able to accomplish a lot together since I’ve served as Council president and even working with him as a member of Council. Checks and balances are important, in municipal government, state government and federal government. And so I anticipate a good working relationship, but also know that a mayor’s job is to help run and manage the city and help lead the city, but I’ll be working collaboratively and cooperatively not just with City Council but our city auditor and our city attorney as well, they all have a role to play…

    You know Columbus is pretty widely recognized as one of the best run municipal governments in the country. I’ve learned a lot from the Mayor, Auditor [Hugh] Dorrian, City Attorney [Richard] Pfeiffer and my colleagues and I’m going to put that to work for the people of Columbus to continue to lead our city forward.

    JB: So what are some top issues that you want to focus on in this campaign and during your first term as mayor if you’re elected?

    AG: There are a couple of things. We know that there are many great things happening in Columbus. Fastest growing city in the Midwest, triple-A bond rating as we had mentioned, recognized as one of the safest big cities in the country. But we also know that there are neighborhoods that are not sharing in our success, and so I’m going to take the model that we’ve taken to Marion-Franklin, American Addition, South Side, Parson’s Avenue corridor, that has started to bloom and blossom in Franklinton, and take that approach, East Columbus…Northland and the renovation and revitalization of that area and that corridor especially on Morse Road, take that approach to some of our other neighborhoods. Hilltop, South Linden, Northland, particularly in the 161 corridor, continues to need help. I’ve heard from folks that live in the Hamilton Road corridor and are looking for help and partnerships with the city and the private sectors, looking to revitalize some of those corridors. And further to the south there are areas that really need our help, investment and partnership.

    But if you take a look at Weinland Park, I actually lived in Weinland Park when I came back from school, and you take a look at Weinland Park when I was there in ’98 and take a look at it today and where it’s headed, that’s because of public private partnerships and a willingness of the city to work with the private sector and leverage incentives and investment to help revitalize neighborhoods. So neighborhood investment, raising per capita income and median income are very, very important. Everything that kind of gets to the core of family stability.

    Family stability is absolutely essential to neighborhood development and neighborhood growth and we need to make sure that we’re doing everything in our power to make sure that families have what they need. The bottom line is if you work hard and play by the rules in Columbus, you shouldn’t live in poverty and we as a city and a community need to make sure that we’re supporting and lifting up families, whether that’s expanding preschool opportunities and we’re going to continue to do that through Early Start and other programs, expansion of afterschool programs for kids, and summer.

    There are an awful lot of kids who get breakfast, lunch and an afterschool meal during the school year through their school. Well then the foot pantries and food banks see this unprecedented demand from families with school-aged children in June, July and August. We need to do more to leverage USDA programing, food reimbursement programs and summer learning opportunities because we know that kids in poverty are disproportionately, negatively impacted by summer learning laws because they don’t have the same kind of access to opportunities that middle class and wealthier families do for their children and we know they are disproportionately negatively impacted. Some of the research says June, July and August can equate to the loss of an entire grading period of academic achievement for a child and it compounds. So if you take a child living in poverty, potentially they lose over a year of academic achievement during their elementary school career just because of summer learning laws.

    JB: Another thing I wanted to ask you, you’ve done a lot of work on the infant mortality rate. I wanted to ask, why is this such a crisis here in Columbus and what do you want to do and what does the city need to do to stop it?

    AG: So, it really gets to the heart of poverty, education, affordable housing, transportation. I think a lot of people, when we started this journey and I put together this task force two years ago, a lot of folks automatically jumped to it being a prenatal and a healthcare-related issue. What we’ve learned over this journey is it’s not, it’s all these social determinants of health that we’ve talked about. And that was after I got people to believe or understand or come to grips with the fact that we had this crisis going on, particularly in eight of our neighborhoods.

    150 children a year die before the age of one, three per week, and African-American children are two and a half times more likely than white children to die before their first birthday. You’re more likely to die in South Linden before you turn one than anywhere else in this community. So we have these eight neighborhoods where they represent about 12 percent of all the births and a third of the deaths. So our focus is going to be working with neighborhood and community leaders to organize, build capacity, educate and to direct outreach to women before they get pregnant, but certainly once they are pregnant to make sure they have all the support they need and an affordable, safe place for them to live, making sure they’re getting the visits from nurses and counselors and other folks to make sure they have the support they need, transportation, really viewing this as trying to make an impact in the lives of 150 families during the course of the year and the years ahead.

    So the goal we set, what I charged the task force with was the most bold and ambitious plan in the country; to reduce our infant mortality rate by 40 percent and cut the racial disparity in half by 2020. So we’re off to a phenomenal start, we’ve hired a project director Liane Egle, who has been involved in these issues for a number of years, a lawyer by training but also a public health professional and communications expert. And then we have Erika Clark Jones, who’s the single point of contact on the city side who’s taking on the neighborhood engagement in these neighborhoods that we’re focused on. So we chose three neighborhoods to start with, South Linden, the Near East Side and the Near South Side, and she is focused on direct neighborhood engagement, building capacity, education, outreach to faith and neighborhood leaders to get them involved with this and we’re making some great success.

    Leveraging partnerships, this isn’t just gonna be the city. We’re seeking resources from the state, the federal government, the county, the health systems and the private sector to help us with this effort because infant mortality rates aren’t just a health statistic, they are a reflection on the overall quality of life and health in our neighborhoods and this is unacceptable in our Columbus and we are going to make a difference in the lives of our youngest kids.

    JB: You’ve also led the Council on a number of issues related to LGBT rights, particularly marriage equality. As nationally the debate over marriage equality winds down with the Supreme Court decision coming up, where do you see the city going next in terms of making it accessible and respectful and a good place for the LGBT community to live?

    AG: Well Columbus has a great history and a proud tradition of being a welcoming city to people from all walks of life. Mike Coleman was a rookie councilmember when he wrote the antidiscrimination legislation and worked with Cindy Lazarus and Matt Habash and other great councilmembers, probably 25 years ago, in putting that in place and we as a Council have continued to build on that proud tradition in making Columbus one of the most LGBT-friendly cities in the country. We’ve received a 100 percent rating on the HRC municipality equality index the last two years and the Mayor and I were proud on behalf of the city to accept the HRC Equality Award last summer.

    We’ve put in place a domestic partner registry so that couples that are committed to each other would have some documentation from municipal government to provide to insurance companies or to their employers to prove their committed relationship. We have also extended domestic partner benefits to all city employees and that’s been codified so it would take an action on behalf of council and the mayor to change that and we are the first city in the state to put antidiscrimination language not on the books – Michael Coleman did that 25 years ago – but in our city’s constitution, in the charter. There were charter amendments last year and the people of Columbus overwhelmingly approved of putting nondiscrimination language in our city’s constitution, which I think speaks volumes about basic values. These are city values and I think it says a lot.

    Now the challenge is, I was proud to host a conversation with Equality Ohio and Why Marriage Matters … with two couples who had been married elsewhere, and it was a pretty powerful conversation because all of these great things we’re doing in the city, two women who were married in Massachusetts were talking with friends and they said, “Yeah that’s great about Columbus, but it’s still in Ohio, where you both could be fired from your jobs, where your marriage is not recognized, and your children would be in flux and if one of you gets sick, what rights are you gonna have to make decisions impacting your family.”

    It’s a powerful statement, because as great as Columbus has been on these issues, as much as Columbus is viewed as the economic development engine for the state, if the state does not reflect the values of its biggest city and it’s largest growing community, the state could negatively impact, and is negatively impacting our economic developing future and putting at risk our economic security moving forward. Young and talented professionals want to go to open, welcoming places where even if they aren’t LGBT, they love someone who is or they have friends who are or this is a value that is nonnegotiable for them and they’re not going to move to places where their values are discounted or not in sync with that community or place.

    So I encourage the state of Ohio to pass nondiscrimination laws immediately. The bottom line is, marriage equality is coming to Ohio and it’s either gonna come from the Supreme Court or by putting an issue on the ballot and the people of Ohio are going to recognize that we as a city and a state can’t meet our full potential until every person, every relationship and every marriage is recognized.

    JB: What would you say you want your legacy to be if you’re elected mayor?

    AG: I think if Columbus was recognized as America’s opportunity city, that my vision and goal is that we have the largest middle class in the country and that you’re more likely to move from poverty to the middle class and hopefully beyond in Columbus than in any other city in the country. That means that we’ve got to invest in children at the very earliest ages, from birth to five, but we also need to support their families in being able to provide for them and help them grow and develop into the types of citizens we want in this community. I think also that we need to be ever vigilant about being smart and open and welcoming to people from around the state, around the country, but around the world.

    If there were a Ginther legacy I think having our community recognized as America’s opportunity city with the largest middle class and the greatest upward mobility of any community in the country, that’d be a pretty remarkable achievement.

    JB: Do you have anything you’d like to add that I didn’t ask about?

    AG: I can talk all day.

    […]

    JB: We can talk about transportation if you want.

    AG: You know, I think when you take a look at the 2050 report and where things stand in this community and as things grow and develop, it’s time for this community to commit to a long-term strategic plan around multi-modal, mass-transit systems. How we get there, our path there, I am more than happy to lead and facilitate that conversation but this city has to commit to it. It is not a crisis today. It will be for our kids.

    And the greatest challenge to our ability, we’re one of the largest communities in the country without a mass-transit system, is we’re always in the top ten easiest commutes of any big city in the country. I can tell you half a dozen corridors that’s not the case but for the overwhelming majority of people you can get just about everywhere in Franklin County in about 20 minutes. So that’s part of the challenge and I think, as I said in one of the debates, we’ve got to get past this being thought of as a cool, hipster amenity. This is about our economic, our long-term economic security and if we are not planning on 500,000 people more people coming to this region over the next 30 or 40 years, I mean, we know better.

    We were a quarter of a million people in 1950, we’re at 840,000 today and we’re gonna get the lion’s share of those 500,000 people that are coming to the region in the next 30 or 40 years so we need to be planning for that and making some strategic investments so that we’re not backtracking and retrofitting a system 30 years from now. That’s gonna be even more expensive, disrupt more families and not be as strategically developed as it could be.

    JB: You may not be able to answer this but is the resistance a cultural resistance, is it a cost resistance, are people concerned about the cost, concerned about the construction…?

    AG: Yes. Yes. All those things. I think it’s the fact that it’s not a crisis today, I think there’re still too many people in this community that view it as a cool, hipster amenity as opposed to a driving force around our economic development future. We need some champions from corporate Columbus and the business community to step up as they have in other communities to lend their voice to this conversation and discussion and promoting this as a key, strategic objective for us to get done and start planning now.

    For ongoing discussion on the Columbus Mayoral Race of 2015, CLICK HERE to visit our Messageboard.

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    Jesse Bethea
    Jesse Betheahttps://columbusunderground.com
    Jesse Bethea is a freelance features writer at Columbus Underground covering neighborhood issues, economics, science, technology and other topics. He is a graduate from Ohio University, a native of Fairfax, Virginia and a fan of movies, politics and baseball. Jesse is the winner of The Great Novel Contest and the author of Fellow Travellers, available now at all major retailers.
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