Norquist's most conspicuous departure from big-city liberalism is on education issues. Norquist is a strong advocate of school choice; his criticism of the "public-school monopoly" and his support for vouchers — even for use in religious schools — puts him at odds with the education establishment. Illiteracy, he contends, is a far worse threat to kids than religion.
That stand and his efforts to rein in police benefits have earned him the enmity of public employees' unions. "He has poked at all the constituencies. They may be grumpy at times, but the tax rate is going down, government costs are going down, the garbage gets picked up, the snow gets plowed, he's putting cops on the street and the city is not going broke," says David Meissner, executive director of the Public Policy Forum, a Milwaukee-based good-government watchdog. "He's tried to change the whole concept of how to look at the urban environment."
Part of the change Norquist advocates is directed at the physical environs of cities. These days, few dispute the argument that high-speed, limited-access highways carved through the middle of cities have been pointlessly destructive. Norquist would actually like to see some of them torn down, and he insists the feds need to make it easier for like-minded cities to do so. "The tendency of freeways to disperse people works directly against the natural advantage of cities," Norquist explains in his recent book, "The Wealth of Cities." In Milwaukee, plans to replace a local freeway with a boulevard are on the drawing board, and the city is exploring the idea of demolishing a nearby interstate highway.
Another institution working against the best interests of cities, Norquist argues, is zoning codes, which he says are no longer city- or pedestrian-friendly enough. In his slide show, Norquist advances his case by juxtaposing pictures of traditional urban design with unsightly suburban sprawl. "The urban form can work, and people will choose it," Norquist tells audiences, "but it will die if people don't recreate it."
Revamping municipal governance is Norquist's other venture in altering the urban environment. A pioneer in virtually all of the major governmental management reforms of the past decade, from performance budgeting to quality management to competitive contracting, Norquist has won nearly as much praise for administrative efficiency as for his ideas on the design of cities. "John will be credited with having a consistent sense of fiscal responsibility and for establishing a strategic budget and planning process that's truly policy-driven," says Meissner. "He runs a good city."
— Charles Mahtesian
Photo by Thomas Fritz
