The fourth in the series of interviews with Baltimore Stakeholders features Matthew Gallagher, President and CEO of the Baltimore based Goldseker Foundation, a non-profit which is heavily involved in Baltimore's future.
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| Matthew Gallagher, CEO of the Goldseker Foundation |
The Goldseker Foundation works in partnership with the city’s civic leadership, a well-established nonprofit sector, and a growing community of entrepreneurs to serve the Baltimore community, through grantmaking primarily in the areas of community development, education, and nonprofit organizational development (Foundation website).
The idea of these interviews is to widen the perspective of the pre-election debate through the voices of a number of prominent Baltimore stakeholders who express their views about the state of Baltimore, the candidates, their preferences, sentiments, recommendations and suggestions for what should be done.
The responses will be published in random order over the coming months of this election campaign. The interviews are not in any way intended to be representative.
Mixed in with the interviews are the findings of a representative study about what Baltimoreans care about, conducted last fall by the Open Society Institute Baltimore published this Monday under the title "Blueprint for Baltimore". At the time I conducted the interviews the OSI report had not yet been released.
OSI will conduct a mayoral candidate forum on Wednesday, February 5, 2020 at 7pm in the Reginald Lewis Museum.
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| OSI poll: Where jobs should be created |
Matthew Gallagher
Matthew D. Gallagher
President/CEO
The Goldseker
Foundation
1.
Are you overall
optimistic about Baltimore or pessimistic? Why?
It’s usually easy to be optimistic about Baltimore when
you’re a grant maker working with and supporting dynamic leaders and
mission-driven organizations that do great work. Unfortunately, while we’ve got
pockets of performance and promise around Baltimore, they’re not pervasive.
Baltimore’s people, neighborhoods, and institutions should be doing much better
than we are.
2.
What three issues
do you suggest should be the top priority of the new Mayor?
Public safety, public
education, and functional government.
Baltimore must be a
safer place to live and raise a family and work and grow businesses. It
requires gaining back the public’s trust that effective policing can occur with
absolute integrity, while at the same time bringing appropriate focus and
intensity to comprehensive interventions in the lives of those most responsible
for and at risk of falling victim to violence. Sustained success in these
complimentary efforts is the surest way to enable the new investments needed to
accelerate improvement in our public schools and restore confidence in
Baltimore City’s elected leadership.
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| Gallagher in 2018 at the University of Baltimore withUB President and former Mayor Kurt Schmoke |
A consistently functional government can provide all of
Baltimore’s neighborhoods with equitable access to not just basic City
services, but higher-quality neighborhood amenities too. It can also harness
its buying power to increase employment opportunities by prioritizing local
hiring, purchasing, and contracting and scale the most promising partnerships
with local nonprofits. Spurring our City’s local economy and forging effective
partnerships create the momentum and conditions where we can pursue, adopt, and
execute more systemic policies that improve the health and welfare of Baltimore
City residents and confidently advance regional initiatives involving local
assets critical to the metropolitan region’s success. These could include
public management of Baltimore’s water utility, refuse management, and expanded
and integrated transportation options for residents, workers, and visitors
alike. This isn’t about just finding Superman or Wonder Woman to be mayor, we
need a whole Justice League of superheroes to bring agency- and issue-specific
leadership and management to all of City government.
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| OSI survey: What services should be prioritized? |
3.
If you were to
advise a candidate for Mayor what would be your best suggestion?
While articulating
broad priorities that reflect the shared aspirations of those who truly care
about Baltimore is an important first step for candidates in a campaign, the
next step is more challenging and important. It involves persuading a
rightfully skeptical public that real progress can be simultaneously achieved
in a number of different areas. That requires being hyper-specific regarding
what actions should be taken, where and when those actions will occur, the ways
in which those actions will be carried out, and who will be responsible. It’s
about creating real expectations, meeting them much more often than not, and
constantly communicating with stakeholders the roles they can play in
accelerating progress.
4.
What should the next
US President do for cities?
Doing no harm would be a great first step and provide
immediate relief.
The federal government could really play an important role
in more sustainably financing the delivery of public services at the local and
state levels. There is so much consensus around wanting to invest more in
education vs. incarceration, preventive health care vs. acute care…there’s a
very long list of issues and policy areas where the public’s overwhelming
preference would be to invest in higher yield activities that, generally, have
larger upfront costs and produce tangible dividends in years to come. But if
you’re a mayor or governor trying to lead and manage within a four-year
election cycle and annually produce a balanced budget, it can be very difficult
to self-finance these upfront investments that will eventually lead to higher
earnings, lower incarceration, and reduced health care costs. While there has
been limited public finance innovation in areas like social impact bonds,
cities (and states too) really need the federal government’s scale to create
glide paths to sustainably transition public investments towards activities
that produce better long-term outcomes.
5.
What recent local
fact has given you hope for Baltimore?
Having the NFL’s best player has given me hope for
Baltimore. The civic pride in the Ravens’ and Lamar Jackson’s successes cut
across race, class, and neighborhood. We need more things that bring us
together and unite us in such ways.
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| Music lover Gallagher at the 8x10 last week |
6.
What recent local
fact has depressed you the most?
A fifth straight year of 300+ homicides. It’s completely
unacceptable and everyone knows it, but it’s particularly depressing that we
can’t forge a clearer community consensus and take more tangible courses of
action to reverse this devastating trend.
We need an unwavering focus on the issue of violence.
Enough with distractions like aerial surveillance, local/state control of the
Baltimore Police, and even squeegee kids. We should be constantly talking about
where, when, and how the police work and repairing relationships within
communities to restore trust. We need sustained, intensive, and direct
engagement with the citizens most at risk of killing or being killed. And for
all the appropriate attention given to the Baltimore Police, we need to collectively
scrutinize the actions/inactions of other important participants in the public
safety continuum and hold them accountable too, particularly the State’s
Attorney’s Office and State Parole and Probation.
7.
Do you support a
particular candidate for Mayor and for City Council?
As the head of the Goldseker Foundation, no. The
foundation’s role is to support the people and institutions of Baltimore in a
completely nonpartisan way. This requires us to regularly work closely with
local elected and appointed officials. The foundation has always and will
continue to be a reliable resource for the mayor, council members, and the hard
working professionals of city government.
As a private individual, I can tell you I’ll absolutely be
voting (as everyone should), although I don’t yet know for whom. At this point,
I just know the candidates for whom I wouldn’t vote.
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| Baltimore: Have the best times been in the past? (photo: Philipsen, Abandoned train facilities near the streetcar museum. |
8.
What personal
contribution to Baltimore are you most proud of?
Being the founding director of CitiStat is a source of
great personal pride, as is seeing the program replicated and adapted so many
times over the past two decades. I was very fortunate to be part of a great
team that made this contribution to the field of public sector management.
I’m also very proud to have the privilege of leading the
Goldseker Foundation. During my tenure and with the board’s full support, the
foundation has shifted community development investments into more challenging
neighborhoods, we’ve granted to more minority- and women-led organizations, and
invested our endowment locally and with more diverse firms and managed funds
than at any point in our history.
9.
Any final thought?
Thank you for your outstanding Community Architecture
blogposts. You regularly give substantive treatment to timely issues of great
concern to Baltimore.
Matthew D. Gallagher serves as the President and CEO of the
Goldseker Foundation. Before joining the Foundation in 2013, Mr. Gallagher
served as Chief of Staff to Maryland Governor Martin J. O’Malley and was
responsible for managing the day-to-day activities of the executive branch of
Maryland State government. Prior to his position in Maryland State government,
Mr. Gallagher served as Director of CitiStat, Baltimore’s nationally recognized
public sector accountability program. Mr. Gallagher has also served as Project
Director for the Greater Baltimore Committee, as an assistant deputy mayor in
Philadelphia Mayor Edward G. Rendell’s administration, and in educational
programs for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
Other articles and interviews in this series:
Alvin Hathaway: A Marshall Plan for Cities!
David Troy: Joan Pratt should be fully investigated
How Baltimore could move up from its F in transportation
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