Frontline Stewards of Public Trust

The Michigan Municipal League

October 7, 2026

Traverse City, Michigan

Thank you and good afternoon. I can ’t begin to do justice to Tonya ’s remarks about assaults on democracy. So let me take a slightly different tack.

Every mayor, supervisor, manager, commissioner, and councilmember in this room woke up this morning knowing the assignment:

The water still has to run.

The roads still have to be repaired.

The police and fire departments still have to answer the call.

The budget still has to balance.

And none of that gets easier when Washington grows less predictable. It gets harder.

The question before us is not simply how to absorb another cut or navigate another uncertainty. The question is whether communities can redesign the machinery of local problem-solving using the assets already sitting around the table.

This is where the conversation becomes broader than economic development alone. Because it entails as well the imperative of investing in the qualities of community life that make residents believe they have a stake in its future . . . that they belong . . . that the place belongs to them.

In a word, the imperative of strengthening the bonds between people and place.

Because at a moment when so many Americans are questioning whether institutions of all kinds can still solve problems, it is the people in this room – leaders closest to the daily routines of local life – who hold the keys to demonstrating that democracy can still work for community residents.

You are not simply managers of public services. You are frontline stewards of public trust.

The Federal Headwinds

For much of the last forty years, our political economy has been characterized by a steady flow of federal investments to address community challenges that neither the local municipality nor private sector markets alone could address.

That was then.

This is now.

Federal retrenchment is no longer a future possibility, but instead our new reality.

Much of the mail has not yet arrived, but it has been addressed and postmarked. We have just begun to feel the effects moving through our systems. Constrictions in housing support . . . changing Medicaid requirements . . .   less predictable flows of infrastructure dollars . . .   cut-backs in food assistance . . . and on and on.

And it will increasingly fall to all of you to adapt, even as the State of Michigan tries to shore up support where it can.

Which is why the futures of local government and community-based nonprofits are more intertwined than ever.

I suspect that everyone in this room can point to public/nonprofit partnerships that facilitate the allocation of capital and talent to essential needs – think community health workers, nonprofit housing developers, legal aid attorneys, block club organizers – the list is as long as it is familiar.

The Sinews of Civic Problem-Solving Infrastructure

It is exactly those kinds of partnerships that define how well a community creates and stewards a sense of common purpose – what Robert Putnam famously termed “social capital ”– the often unseen or undervalued networks of mutual assistance and support that bridge across sectors . . . across class . . . across race . . . across ideological divides.

That stewardship is the real challenge in front of us: whether, in the midst of real-time pressures generated by federal retrenchment and the cynicism that has come to dominate the state of our politics, we can strengthen and expand the sinews of civic infrastructure that allow communities to solve problems together.

Let me suggest two simple points of orientation.

First, solve problems as systems. Second, widen who counts as a leader.

So first, we are best served when we embrace a form of reverse engineering: identifying the constellation of actors in a community who possess the right tools to address a community challenge, and then determining how those tools can be deployed in the right doses, in the right sequence, at the right pace .

No single actor can meet the staggering spectrum of community needs. Not the mayor, the council, the city manager, the largest employer, the state, or anyone else.

Because communities work as systems.

Let me make that concrete. Consider Sturgis.

Earlier this year, Sturgis Hospital closed with three days' notice. It had served the community for more than a century before years of financial strain caught up with it.

On the surface, that sounds like a health-care story.

But every one of you knows it ’s really a community story. Because if you've ever lost a major employer, a school building, or a hospital, you know what comes next: The issue ceases to be about the institution itself. The issue becomes the future of the community.

When a hospital closes, the consequences ripple outward. Employers worry about attracting workers. Families reconsider whether they can stay. First responders face longer transports – indeed, Sturgis's public safety director said ambulance transport distances increased from two miles to twenty-five miles. Seniors lose access to nearby care. Local businesses lose customers.

In other words, our Michigan cities and towns are, at heart, not a collection of separate institutions. They are a single, interconnected civic ecology.

That ’s why the challenge we face is larger than replacing a federal grant or adjusting to a budget cut – as tremendously painful as that is. It ’s understanding how to fortify the entire civic ecosystem before one strained institution becomes a community-wide problem.

The very good news is that Michigan enters this era with an unusually rich civic ecosystem.

From Ironwood to Monroe . . . From Benton Harbor to Alpena . . . our communities are supported by community foundations, libraries, Main Street organizations, hospitals, places of worship, credit unions, United Ways, and regional philanthropy.

Together, they form a dense web of relationships on which communities can draw. The question is whether we can draw on it with ever-greater intentionality.

To do that will require our public officials to set clear community priorities – that is the obligation an election certificate carries. But we also need the public sector to recognize that nonprofit organizations are essential to the implementation of those priorities.

That is what we at Kresge have seen time after time in Detroit, whether addressing blight remediation . . . revitalizing a small business corridor . . . or fortifying the public health response during COVID.

Community foundations can play an invaluable role in that equation.

Michigan possesses one of the nation ’s strongest networks of community foundations. Some are quite small. . . Some are even smaller. . . .

Yet, they hold invaluable knowledge of local aspirations, relationships, and challenges. And because they are often viewed as trusted and relatively neutral actors, they can help convene communities around difficult questions that neither government nor the private sector can easily tackle alone.

The second point is that we need to expand our understanding of community leadership.

Reverse engineering of civic challenges doesn ’t work unless a city ’s civic actors of all kinds have the capacity to contribute meaningfully to problem solving. It is distributed leadership.

Leadership doesn't stop at city hall's front door. In the years ahead, it may instead depend on how effectively we connect everyone beyond that door.

We tend to talk about infrastructure as roads and pipes, electrical grids and broadband. But communities also depend on another kind of infrastructure. The after-school program. The food pantry. The housing nonprofit. The community health clinic. The schools and libraries and parks. The community foundation. The hardware store. The churches and synagogues and mosques. These organizations carry loads every bit as real as a bridge carries traffic.

They connect families to essential supports . . . they deliver services that governments contract out . . . they employ your neighbors . . . they possess expertise and credibility and relationships that government can ’t replicate.

And when they weaken, the strain doesn't disappear. It simply shows up somewhere else, often at city hall.

We have to invest in their capacity – whether through redirected public dollars or grants from the community foundations ’ donor-advised funds . . . whether through small investments from our community banks or technical assistance from statewide intermediaries.

So many of you already do this. I would suggest you ’ll have to do it even more systematically. I completely understand how very difficult that is when you ’re trying to do more with less. But set the table before you ’re buffeted even more severely by the headwinds we will inevitably face.

When you build next year's budget, sit down with the after-school program . . . with the clinic and the family-service agency . . .   with your community foundation. Ask what they are seeing. . . ask them what happens to your city if they have to cut back . . . ask them where there might be joint effort.

The Primacy of Localism

The future of Michigan will be written city by city, township by township, neighborhood by neighborhood. Not by the Congress or the White House or OMB. But instead around tables at which public, nonprofit, business, and civic leaders forge resilient bonds of trust and respect that enable them to set a path of common purpose and collective problem-solving.

And as those chapters are written, people are more likely to believe that democracy can deliver results that matter.

The most important work you do in the next year may not necessarily be writing another grant application. It may be identifying who's missing from the table and bringing them into the room before the next crisis arrives.

Federal retrenchment may leave communities with fewer resources. But it does not absolve us of the obligation to lead. The work you do every day is exactly the kind of leadership the times demand.

The water still has to flow. And so does the work of building trust, mutual support, and shared purpose.

Thank you .

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