After 23 years serving various governments in various capacities, including eight years as mayor of the District of Columbia, Anthony Williams is bidding adieu to the public sector. But what’s next for the bow-tied leader who presided over the District’s remarkable economic turnaround, first as chief financial officer and then as chief executive?
Well, there’s a clear desire to work with children in a nonprofit vein, he’s said repeatedly. And then there’s a less-advertised wont to bring home the bacon. The aging Honda Accord in the garage, after all, doesn’t replace itself.
“I’ve said I know what I’m going to be doing on the side,” Williams, 55, said during an interview with The Examiner. “I’ve just got to fill my nine to five. Nine to five I’m going to make some money.”
For now, though, the mayor is in reflection mode.
The nation’s capital was in dire financial straits, under the thumb of the control board and a national laughingstock, when then-Chief Financial Officer Anthony Williams defeated Harold Brazil, Kevin Chavous and Jack Evans for the Democratic nomination in 1998.
His focus on economic development and revitalization has led the District from budget deficits to unprecedented surpluses. With help from the D.C. Council and a potent regional economy, the city now has one of the strongest real estate economies in the world.
“We’re in a port where there are good currents and good winds that prevail, but our boat was basically dismantled,” Williams said of the city’s past economic condition. “It wasn’t even in dry dock. We got the boat back afloat; we got it in ship-shape; we’ve got a good crew on it and now we’re benefiting from good weather. But you can’t benefit from any weather if the boat is lying on its back with holes in it.”
Williams and current CFO Natwar Gandhi introduced basic policies to improve the economy, tax collections and general government services, which raised the District’s profile among developers, on Wall Street and on Capitol Hill, said Alice Rivlin, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
“There was a time when you went up to the Hill and talked about the District and they laughed at you or said something very condescending, almost racist,” said Rivlin, who chaired the Financial Management Assistance Authority, better known as the control board, from 1998 to 2001. “But that has turned around.”
Williams was always most popular in the District’s wealthiest communities west of Rock Creek Park, where his economic policies and intellectualism resonated. He can name 20 projects off the top of his head, he said, that have benefited communities east of the Anacostia River — just as he can explain why he never connected with the residents of Wards 7 and 8.
“I just think it’s personality, mannerisms,” he said. “The RFK racetrack hurt me in the community. Closing D.C. General hurt me in the African-American community. Some of the comments I made when I was CFO about the work force being inept. Baseball was characterized as taking from the poor and giving to the rich, even though it had nothing to do with that. So all those things.”
But east-of-the-river communities, he continued, will profit from his policies: “It takes time to get all of that. [Mayor-elect Adrian Fenty’s] just going to go around to openings for the first year and a half, two years.”
Williams said his legacy is not one project, but rather an “overall composite.”
“We brought back self-respect to the city, a sense of higher expectations and aspirations for the city,” he said. “And that’s just not the rhetoric of it, it was just doing some basic things, certainly not yet at a superlative level, but just getting them done better. Answering the phones, picking up the trash, cleaning up the streets.”
For baseball fans, Williams’ legacy will be the Washington Nationals — despite the stadium debacle. The mayor certainly doesn’t regret lobbying for a publicly funded ballpark, just the way he went about securing the financing.
“We didn’t raise money, properly document it and get our own mailing and information out until way late in the game,” Williams said. “We should have really anticipated the issues, the controversy ahead of time. It’d be like landing on the beach without any cover from the battleships or from the air.”
Lower-income residents in gentrifying communities — U Street Northwest and H Street Northeast, for example — decry Williams’ policies as the catalyst for their displacement. But gentrification in D.C. isn’t necessarily a bad word, Williams said.
“It’s a bad word if you mean we’re just going to, in the 1950s, 1960s urban renewal sense, completely remove the existing residents and create this utopia,” he said. “But it’s not a bad word if you mean you’re bringing in investment to create mixed-income communities. We’ve actually done a lot on the latter.”
