Why Government Matters: A Conversation with Steven David and Angela Blanchard, City of Houston
Below is the Nowak Metro Finance Lab Newsletter shared biweekly by Bruce Katz.
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May 29, 2025
Since the launch of the Department of Government Efficiency, I’ve been meaning to write a piece about, well, “government efficiency.”
For those people who have had the privilege to work in the public sector, we know the breadth and depth of the challenges that our country faces and the commitment to service that enables public servants in our communities to be rightfully called “essential workers.”
Earlier this year, Houston Mayor John Whitmire released the City of Housing Efficiency Study: A Path to Restoring Trust in Houston’s Government. The report can be found at COH-Efficiency-Study-Final-Report.pdf and it is worth a close read.
I was introduced to this report by Angela Blanchard, who came to my attention during her tenure as President and CEO of Baker Ripley, a remarkable community service organization in Houston. Jennifer Bradley and I profiled Angela in our 2013 book The Metropolitan Revolution.
Angela now serves as Houston’s Chief Recovery and Resilience Officer, which is appropriate since her website proudly declares that she was “Born for Storms.”
Angela, in turn, introduced me to Steven David, the Deputy Chief of Staff to Mayor Whitmire and a key player in the city’s push for government efficiency. As anyone who has ever served in government knows, Steven’s position puts him in the “eye of the storm.”
I thought it would be edifying to let Steven and Angela describe what they are doing as a means of reminding ourselves of why government matters during this tumultuous period.
The City of Houston, like other major U.S. cities, is a vast enterprise. Both of you hold senior positions in city government, performing functions that are inordinately critical and complex. Describe how you came to occupy these positions and what you do.
Steven: I’m a City of Houston boomerang, having first joined the administration under Mayor Annise Parker during the Great Recession. I led a team that worked across departments to leverage the vast data cities collect—transforming it into insights to measure performance and improve service delivery to Houstonians. I continued this work under Mayor Sylvester Turner for two years before transitioning to the private sector.
At KPMG, I conducted operational and performance assessments for city and county governments across the country. I later joined Accenture, where I worked with mayors and executive teams in major U.S. cities to help them “trust but verify” what their department heads reported—particularly during the early transition phases of new administrations.
Roughly two years before his inauguration, I began working with then-Senator John Whitmire to help him understand the inner workings of the $7 billion, 23,000-employee organization he was preparing to lead. After his election, he asked me to serve as his Deputy Chief of Staff, a role I continue to hold. In this capacity, I help manage the day-to-day operations of 12 of the City’s 23 departments on his behalf.
Angela: During Mayor Whitmire’s mayoral campaign, he formed working groups around issues where he knew Houston faced challenges. Transportation. Finance. Infrastructure. Disasters. Several of my colleagues recommended he recruit me to help think through disaster planning and response.
On May 16th of 2024, after recruiting a robust “3-legged stool” of public, private and nonprofit leaders, sixty-five in all, a meeting was planned to consider a menu of items that had been tension or breaking points in the past. We also needed to refresh past solutions and relationships that had gone stale because the people who had led in past disasters had moved on without leaving a playbook behind. Every form of upheaval requires an elegant dance between emergency response plans and the necessary improvisation. Improvisation turns on trust.
I had volunteered for months, determined to make sure the new city hall team was as prepared and connected as possible. On the morning of the May 16th convening, we set to work on key areas where we needed to tighten our relationships and collaborative actions. We wrapped up at noon. The derecho struck five hours later. With less than two hours warning, this bizarre “linear tornado,” tore across Houston at over one hundred miles per hour, shutting down power to 900,000 people, heavily impacting the downtown business district, and ultimately causing over a billion dollars in damage. Tons of debris and miles of broken glass. Tree branches through thousands of roofs.
Less than two months later, on July 8th, Hurricane Beryl struck, shutting off power to nearly 2.7 million people at the peak of the category 1 storm. Some outages lasted two weeks. More debris. More roofs destroyed. Most Beryl damage estimates are in the $2-4 billion range.
I was sitting at the Houston Emergency Command Center as we were orchestrating the response to Hurricane Beryl. Mayor Whitmire had learned that our fire and police stations did not have reliable power backup generators. All around the table were department heads and emergency managers, holding quiet conversations about what we could activate in the way of power backup. In one chilling moment, I heard the public works director express concerns about our ability to keep the water supply sufficiently pressured to avoid a “boil water” notice in the middle of this power outage. I had an immediate flashback to Hurricane Ike and the resulting outages which triggered the same conversation. Houston did not have adequate reliable backup power to our critical infrastructure during Hurricane Ike in 2008 and seventeen years later, we were still unable to promise safe water and sanitation during a power outage. To make matters worse, multiservice centers that had been billed by the previous administration as “resilience hubs” had no backup power, the most fundamental element required to call a place a resilience hub. We were scrambling to identify places for residents to take refuge from the suffocating, life threatening heat.
That chilling moment, wondering if over three million people would be stranded without water and sanitation services, prompted me to agree two months later to join the Whitmire team full-time and dive into power protection. What would it take to place reliable backup generation at the city’s critical water and wastewater treatment plants, main police and fire stations and the city’s multi-service centers? It turns out, it will take over $200M, a lot of engineering and persistence. We are optimistic that we will receive additional state and federal help to move this project forward. Once installed, this natural gas powered, grid supporting assets will allow us to promise basic service and places of refuge to Houston residents.
For Steven: Government efficiency has become a major linchpin of Mayor Whitmire’s administration. Describe how you define “efficiency,” what it means in practical terms and why running a government is different than running a corporation.
During Senator John Whitmire’s campaign for Mayor of Houston, we developed a four-pronged assessment framework – a standard exercise conducted by businesses across the world – to evaluate the City’s operations. The assessment included: (1) an organizational review to examine structure, spans, layers, and workforce utilization; (2) a performance assessment to gauge service delivery effectiveness; (3) a spend analysis to understand how public dollars flow out of the City, through which procurement mechanisms, and where the City could better capitalize on economies of scale through contract mergers; and (4) a forensic accounting review to detect irregularities in financial activity. The forensic component was especially critical given recent high-profile cases of bribery and theft by City employees, underscoring the need for greater oversight and accountability.
This analysis revealed staggering inefficiencies, including a surplus of middle managers and a higher-than-average employee count. For example, 42% of managers in the city government had 3 or fewer direct reports, an exceptionally inefficient organizational model. Instead of resorting to layoffs, which has been a historic go-to for major city mayors during tough budget times, we implemented a three-pronged approach: a hiring freeze, a voluntary retirement incentive that 35% of eligible employees took, saving $100 million annually, and a mandate for department directors to restructure based on sound business principles before their hiring freeze could be lifted. This holistic strategy allowed us to reduce inefficiencies and optimize operations without placing the burden on hardworking Houstonians.
While private businesses focus on profit margins, the motivations and operations of municipal government differ significantly. Cities often provide essential services like libraries and parks at a loss, prioritizing public good and accessibility over profitability. The “profit motive” in government is more about community satisfaction and effective service delivery rather than financial gain. Thus, while certain efficiencies from the private sector can be beneficial, governing is a unique profession that requires a distinct approach, balancing fiscal responsibility with the broader public interest.
For Steven: I gather you have presented Houston’s work to the federal government. What has been the response?
We brought our efficiency study to Washington, D.C., engaging with our local congressional delegation and eventually the President’s executive team, who were eager to see how Houston’s work aligns with their federal initiatives. This collaboration underscores that the innovative measures we’re implementing locally are resonating at the national level.
Over the course of our analysis and the 18 months of developing relationships with the Biden and Trump Administrations, I began to develop a hypothesis on why Mayor Whitmire and the City of Houston are having success at the federal level. My hypothesis centers on the post-COVID landscape, particularly after federal incentives ended. Unlike its peers, the City of Houston used 81% of CARES and ARPA funds for general operations, highlighting an overreliance on one-time federal funding for routine expenses. Dependencies like these shaped federal perceptions of municipalities, particularly ours. Our efficiency study demonstrated Houston’s commitment to becoming a self-reliant partner, capable of collaborating with the federal and state governments as equals, rather than relying on continuous financial support to sustain basic city functions. Mayor Whitmire has a saying “you can’t fix something you can’t admit is broken”, and I believe that sentiment – and the mayor’s track record of working across the aisle for 50 years – is the reason why Houston is being viewed in a new, positive light by the state and federal governments.
For Angela: To many people, climate change is either a long-term challenge, an abstract idea or a hoax. But Houston is living climate change — floods, hurricanes, deep freezes and beyond. It’s almost biblical in its scale and impact. Describe how you even begin to prepare for and respond to the fragility of our world.
Houston is an essential city. Essential to the region, to the country, to the world. We must remain operable. The Port of Houston must be able to move its 230 million tons of cargo; the Texas Medical Center must have a reliable water supply to serve seven million people each year. Forty percent of the nation’s base petrochemical supply depends upon the people of this city being able to navigate this fraught landscape. These are the same people that pursue and harness the largest energy transition efforts and investments. The people of this region move the country. And power the world. We must be operable come hell, wind, or high water.
Leading through disasters is a critical mayoral responsibility on the Gulf Coast. The ability to flip out of the normal rhythms and responsibilities of “mayor-ing” and into marshalling and deploying resources before, during and after storms, is no longer “other duties as assigned.” We are in an era of upheaval and upheaval is the norm. I know from decades of experience that response and recovery move at the speed of trust and that key institutional leaders must know and understand one another’s priorities and capabilities. Ahead of the storm.
Critical to our success is the mayor’s willingness to look at the non-glamorous problems facing cities. Public safety, finance, infrastructure, disaster vulnerabilities and responses. Generators.
By shining a bright light on the public health and safety essentials, Mayor Whitmire has satisfied those who voted for him and won over some who wondered how he would do as Mayor after 50 years in the Texas state legislature. Problems are made more workable by his willingness to lay out the starting conditions in full view. With that permission, I dove into scoping a project to provide reliable power protection to essential city assets: infrastructure, public safety, and places of refuge. The rest of the team focused squarely on resolving contracts with fire and police, rightsizing city government and aligning resources to budget, and solving for a city services model that reflects the core responsibilities of city government. The foundation of what Houston residents rely upon.
Previous city administrations have wanted Houston to have a seat at what I like to call the “cool kids climate table.” I believe every single effort to mitigate climate impacts will save lives. All those efforts matter, but I am a climate realist. There are many climate realists on the Gulf Coast. We foresaw this era of upheaval. As the climate movement got louder and more intense, petrochemical plants got bigger and bigger. We Gulf Coasters sensed that all the transition efforts in the world would not come in time to avert the worst of climate impacts here.
Disaster responders don’t fear hurricanes. Single events. We fear cascades. The event that triggers another event. The natural disaster that causes a critical infrastructure element to fail leading to a public health and safety catastrophe. The storm that triggers a chemical plant explosion that shuts down the port and cripples energy supply. As we approach the twentieth anniversary of Katrina, I regularly remind people that we would struggle to remember the name of that 2005 hurricane had the levees not failed. My reminder: There is a levee in every city.
Both of you are proud Houstonians. You address daily some of the toughest challenges facing any city or metropolis in our country and the world. How do you remain sane? And what makes you most proud of your city?
Steven: What makes me most proud of Houston is its unwavering spirit of opportunity. If you’re willing to put in the work, Houston opens its doors to you. We boast affordable housing, a strong philanthropic culture, and a rich tapestry of industries—from our bustling port and pioneering spaceport to the world-renowned Medical Center and vibrant commercial hubs like the Galleria. Houston is a global city where over 90 languages are spoken and more than 90 consular generals are present, creating a mosaic of cultures and ideas. Most importantly, we come together as a community to call out what needs to change and to champion what’s right, showcasing the resilience and unity that define us. Also, we have the best Tex Mex, and we will fight you if you disagree.
Angela: It is no secret that Houston fosters a chest out, strengths forward, culture of ambition. A culture that continues to attract like-minded people. Placing a bet that what they want to do can be best accomplished here. Frustratingly, this is a culture fonder of “we shall overcome” than we shall prepare, mitigate or retreat. The Kinder Institute, in a recent survey, reported what we suspected: fewer than 8% of Houston residents do meaningful storm preparedness. In 2024, despite our record of rolling disasters, Houston added 200,000 people. As this era of upheaval continues, more people are moving into the path of storms, more critical assets are being built in places vulnerable to high wind, extreme heat, and flooding. Houston, as vulnerable as it is, still serves as high ground for those on the Gulf Coast and for those displaced by all kinds of storms across the world.
Houston is a place of contradictions and juxtapositions, a place where the forces reshaping the world – climate, energy transition, migration – collide. Whatever solutions are forged here, whatever conflicts are reconciled here, in this essential city, will matter here and in all the places where these forces collide.
Bruce Katz is the Founding Director of the Nowak Metro Finance Lab at Drexel University.