Welcome to Route Fifty

Welcome to Route Fifty, the newest digital news publication from Atlantic Media’s Government Executive Media Group. We’ve been working for months planning and building our new website.

The site has its roots in GovExec’s State & Local channel, which launched last summer. Since then, we’ve covered a lot of ground, reporting from Seattle and Los Angeles to Grand Rapids and Albuquerque to Jefferson City and Portland, to Raleigh and Pohatcong Township (that’s in New Jersey).  

With Route Fifty, our mission remains largely the same: connecting the people and ideas advancing state and local governments across the United States.

We’ll continue to showcase stories involving innovation, technology, management and best practices that are helping to shape state, county and municipal governments.

Here’s some of what we have as part of our Route Fifty launch week offerings:

• Bill Lucia, a Route Fifty reporter, profiles Debra Lam, who heads up Pittsburgh’s Department of Innovation and Performance. Lucia also looks at how officials in North Dakota, Nebraska and Utah are looking at how to best plan for the impacts of tax revenue volatility on their rainy day funds.
• From Washington state, King County Executive Dow Constantine kicks off the first installment of “Connected Government,” his multi-part guest article series on local government management with a look at income inequality.
• Jedidiah Gant, a digital urbanist, and Raleigh City Councilman Bonner Gaylord co-author a piece on how public and private sector collaboration makes North Carolina’s capital city a thriving place to live, work and do business.
• In a feature on the experience of Napa County, California, following last August’s 6.0 magnitude earthquake, I interview the county’s chief information security officer, Gary Coverdale, on how having a smart IT strategy, including mobile resiliency, is critical for disaster response planning.
• Kirsten Wyatt, the assistant city manager of West Linn, Oregon, and co-founder of Emerging Local Government Leaders, pens a post about the “13 percent” problem in local governments—that’s the percentage of women who rise to the position of chief administrative officer, a statistic that hasn’t changed since the mid 1980s.
• Route Fifty and Government Executive Editor-at-Large Timothy B. Clark interviews the mayor of Tucson, Arizona, Jonathan Rothschild, about intergovernmental challenges the Grand Canyon State’s second-largest city faces.
• William Vajda, the city manager of Marquette, Michigan, discusses micropolitan communities and how important it is for them to create a strong identity to stand out—and maintain strong ties with their “diaspora” communities.

Among the stories we have coming later this week …

• As Oklahoma City prepares to mark the 20th anniversary of the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building, Route Fifty News Editor Dave Nyczepir will look at the lessons in municipal communications and response from that tragic event. He interviews Oklahoma City Police Chief Bill Citty, who was a public information officer on that fateful day.
• I’ll feature an interview with El Paso City Manager Tommy Gonzalez about strategic planning and pushing organizational change within local governments. I’ll also check in with the city of San Diego’s open data efforts being led by Chief Data Officer Maksim Pecherskiy.
• In a guest article, Nigel Jacob, the co-chair of the Office of New Urban Mechanics in Boston, and Eric Gordon, the director of the Engagement Lab, will dissect a big misconception about innovation and engagement. (Hint: They’re not separate things.)
• Digital consultant William Beutler of Beutler Ink will discuss best practices for local governments in dealing with the Wikipedia editing community.
• In a guest article, Ashley Fruechting of Vision Internet will lay out some best practices for municipal governments on how to best leverage the power of social media for their residents.

And there’s so much more to come ...

In many ways, leading our editorial efforts first on GovExec State & Local and now on Route Fifty brings me back nearly full circle to my first job out of college. I worked as a consultant at the Federal Transit Administration on a post-9/11 security and emergency preparedness program. The job took me all over the country, connecting transit agencies with their first responder communities and state, local and federal partners.

I found then, and do now, that state, county and municipal government practitioners are eager to share their experiences and learn from one another. There’s a sense of duty to deliver effective services to constituents. There’s also an instinct to break institutional barriers, but that’s not always an easy thing to accomplish.

Good governance is a complex matter. Innovation isn’t always easy. But with so much dysfunction at the federal level, there’s a greater sense than ever that state and local government leaders are leading the way.

Innovation within state, county and municipal government is no longer a choice. It’s a necessity. And at Route Fifty, we’re going to tell the stories, share the experiences and report on how government practitioners are doing it on a daily basis.

We have exciting plans ahead. Come along for the ride.

Michael Grass
Executive Editor, Route Fifty