Pence: New administration will work with mayors

WASHINGTON – When Vice President-elect Mike Pence told his boss he was on his way to talk to more than 300 mayors Tuesday, President-elect Trump asked Pence to deliver a message.’

“He said, `Tell them we’re going to do an infrastructure bill, and it’s going to be big,’” Pence told the local officials gathered for the U.S. Conference of Mayors annual winter meeting.

Infrastructure is the group’s top priority and Trump proposed during the campaign to spend $550 billion over the next decade to upgrade the nation’s crumbling roads, bridges and waterways. But it’s not clear how Trump would pay for it.

Still, the mayors were not as concerned about the method of financing the infrastructure program as they are that Trump will end the tax break for municipal bonds in order to pay for a promised lowering of tax rates.

“If we want to fix our infrastructure, we want to at least not go backwards with the money available, which is what that change would do,” said Jim Brainard, mayor of Carmel, Ind., and a member of the group’s leadership.

Columbia, S.C. Mayor Stephen Benjamin said Trump agreed the tax break for bonds sold by local governments to finance capital projects should remain when members of the conference met with him after the election.The tax break makes the bonds more attractive to investors.

“The administration is going to be a friend to America’s mayors,” Pence promised Tuesday.

Pence said Trump believes the federal government can play a pivotal role in helping cities thrive.

“That’s probably why he spent so much time in the campaign highlighting many issues that are facing America’s cities,” Pence said. “Remember, after all, he’s a New Yorker, through and through.”

But some mayors said they didn’t like what Trump has said about urban areas.

“They are not the dark foreboding places that people have talked about. The president elect, in this regard, paints with too broad a brush,” said New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, vice president of the conference. “And the mayors of America stand here as personal testament to the fact that we believe that our diversity is our strength.”

Landrieu also raised concern about the incoming administration’s promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which the Conference of Mayors endorsed before its 2010 passage. Trump hasn’t specified what he will put in its place, but said his goal is to insure everyone while lowering costs.

Landrieu said mayors stand ready and willing to work either with or against the administration to make sure people have “better health care for less money.”

“That’s what the president-elect said,” he said of Trump’s recent comments.

The mayors themselves don’t have a consensus on any replacement plan. Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett, president of the conference, said he expects the group will back some elements of what should or should not be changed in the current law by the end of their three-day conference.

He noted the more than 300 mayors who attended the winter meeting is a record for the group.

“It’s clearly not an ordinary year,” he said.

Members of the conference represent the nation’s larger cities and many of them are Democrats. That fact might have been reflected in the reception for Pence, which was cordial, but not enthusiastic.

Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett said it was exceptionally gracious of Pence to come and he particularly liked his “no politics, just results” promise to work with Democratic and Republican governors on an equal footing.

“From a purely provincial perspective, I couldn’t be more pleased that the vice president elect is from Indiana and knows very well the types of challenges that Indianapolis faces,” said Hogsett, a Democrat, who said he worked well with Pence during his time as governor.

West Hollywood Mayor Lauren Meister also praised Pence for reaching out, but is taking a wait-and-see approach to the new administration’s policies. Representing a city which has a lot of immigrants and a large gay and lesbian community, Meister said she’s particularly concerned the new administration will enact divisive laws rather than support anti-discrimination measures.

“I think we’ll just have to see how they proceed,” she said.