Bill Purcell was sworn in as a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1987, eventually rising to the post of majority leader. He ran for mayor of Nashville in 1999, winning reelection four years later with a record 85 percent of the vote. Last year, he was named one of Governing's Public Officials of the Year. Alan Greenblatt spoke with Purcell about his time in public life.

Mr. Mayor, you came into office right around the time Governing started publication.

Purcell

I was sworn in January of 1987. In terms of the broad sweep of things, I would say that as I started my career in public service in the late 80s and as Governing began, the major policy debates and innovations were occurring at the state level.

I was born in the '50s, clearly part of the baby boomers. We became aware of public life when the federal government was clearly the innovator in public policy. Love it or leave it, that's where it was happening.

By the 80s, states clearly were innovating in education and health care and in public safety. In 80s and into the 90s, states were most exciting places to be. The largest change in this 20-year period has been that transition from national to state government, which continued on to the local level in the 90s.

What were some of the changes?

What happened was a real move in the most important policy and political innovations, which began to occur at the local level. A lot of it had to do with the issues the overwhelming majority of people were concerned about.

People in this country began to see ahead of the politicians that education was the most important thing. Mayors who, by design or default, had avoided education couldn't any more. Across the country, mayors started seeing the policy importance of it. If the city is going to succeed, you have to have education working.

The same thing is true on economic development. The perception by and large had been that the market takes care of these things and that there wasn't much the mayor could do. That's not good enough. Mayors and cities have to deliver economic opportunity within the jurisdiction.

You also have this incredible change in the speed of communication. I'm tempted to say that none of us foresaw this. The reality is we all thought things would be faster, faster, faster. But I don't think any of us foresaw how quickly that would change the ability of leaders and everybody to do things, the way it empowered incredibly diverse constituencies within the community.

That is very good news. That has made the work of mayors much easier. It may not feel that way every day, when you have 500 messages you hadn't expected that morning. But it's clearly making every enterprise more efficient, more successful.

The downside to that, or the part that's been more complicated, is that the diversity and the change in the manner in which information is communicated, has made the work of building consensus harder. When I started, most everybody got their news in the morning from the newspaper and in the evening between 5:00 and 7:00 through the television.

Now, because of technology, information is shared 24 hours a day, but in a much, much more diffuse and broad way. Frankly, people aren't reading the newspaper the way they did and aren't watching the television way they did. So information they're receiving is both shallower and broader. That's a challenge we all confront now that simply wasn't part of the world 20 years ago.

What do you think that means going forward?

All of that will change in ways we can't foresee. For mayors and folks in state and local government, that's a reason why Governing magazine makes important reading.

Well, thanks for that. But let me ask you to go back where you started, and talk a little more about this shift in responsibility and ideas between different levels of government.

My general sense is that this shift between branches is something that's happened throughout history of the country. In the very earliest days of the Republic, there was a state senator in Maryland. He had a chance to run for Congress but stayed in state senate, thinking that was clearly the more important place to be. That's the same thing with [Maryland Senate President] Mike Miller, why he's decided to stay in the state Senate 200 years later.

There's another opportunity for the federal government again to become the most relevant and important branch of government. First, they have to want to do it. But in the last election, there was a sense in the country that it was important for them to be relevant, be important.

During this time, there was major attention given to wedge issues — not to building consensus and agreement, but to dividing people in the process. That was a major change. The good news, frankly, is that it was not very successful at the state level, and certainly not at the local level. I honestly believe that the last election cycle sent a message: People by and large are going to insist on more and better. On education and public safety, the federal government has the opportunity right now to become a major and relevant player.

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