Lead Virginia and some ideas for addressing what I call "the leadership deficit"

An article in the Monday Washington Times about the Dulles subway proposal, "Dulles project waits on state for rail timeline," mentioned an organization called Lead Virginia, which is an organization dedicated to developing a core group of leaders, primarily from the business sector, knowledgeable about and committed to working on "statewide issues" who will:

• understand individual challenges, priorities, and concerns.
• identify statewide common problems, priorities and solutions.
• focus more on the greater good for all Virginians and less on regional and partisan priorities when acting on the state level.

At the inaugural session for the program, the agenda set out important goals:

• Introduce the program and participants
• Set the standards for this and future classes
• Develop the first stage of positive interaction/network among participants (creating social capital)
• Establish a base of mutual understanding regarding the past, present, and future of the three key issues for the year – education, transportation and the state and local economies. (Future sessions will address the three themes with local/regional emphases using several perspectives: demographics, technology, economic development, growth management and quality of life).

Like Berkeley California's Kitchen Democracy program mentioned earlier in the week, this idea of building a deliberative civic engagement program, in this case by

(1) building a team or at least a group that can work together; and
(2) establishing a base of mutual understanding regarding the past, present, and future

seems to be what we're missing too much of the time when it comes to dealing with issues even at the neighborhood level, definitely at the city-wide level (in Washington, DC) and certainly with regard to important issues that we do need to address regionally.

Don't get me wrong. I am a natural critic. I can't help but be analytical and "critical" in anything and everything. But, it's always directed towards achieving and extending livability and quality communities. Always. The bitter, hyper-critical diatribes that I seem to be seeing all too often in various communities across the city are getting tired.

On the other hand, the bitterness results from a lack of trust and a sense of being ignored on the part of government officials and agencies. Too often the public "participation" "phases" of programs aren't that substantive, and a common base of understanding isn't created. Many times this happens because the process is so rushed.

But when it works, it works well. For example, I am involved in some stuff in Brookland that is contentious for really, no good reason. I was remonstrating about this with a colleague-friend and she wrote:

What they should know is that if you can come up with a plan that folks are really behind-- like 8th Street SE, or the H Street Transportation plan-- and the ANCs and everyone really pushes for it, then the funding will come. The worst thing is to have a plan on the books that no one really likes or can agree about. Then it'll die. So the fact that the plan isn't funded yet isn't a big deal. If folks really like it and push for it-- approve it by all the ANCs, push for it with City Council, etc.-- it'll get funded eventually. The issue is just making sure the project you love gets a piece of that pie.

So it is a two-way street.

We must do better. We can do better.

Index Keywords: civic-engagement