In May 2017, The Political Revolution’s Steven Johnson and David Dai met with Randall Woodfin, candidate for Mayor of Birmingham. They met at Octane Coffee in Birmingham and talked about Randall’s history, their mutual work in education, politics and the issues facing Birmingham. David and Steven each hold a Master’s of Education from the University of Alabama and Randall Woodfin currently serves on The Board of Education.

Volunteers for The Political Revolution teamed up to create interview questions and worked with Steven to create this text and audio reproduction of the conversation that followed.

Over the next two weeks, we would like to share that conversation with you for your reading or listening pleasure.

Thank you for supporting progressive candidates!

Audio available on SoundCloud:

Steven : What part of town did you grow up in?

Randall : I grew up in North Birmingham. It’s an industrial part of town. I was born in 81. The hospital I was born in is the proximity of where I live too. But I was born in the north side of town – North Birmingham. The actual name of the neighborhood is North Birmingham. The City of Birmingham has 99 neighborhoods, one of 99 neighborhoods is called North Birmingham.

Steven : What is your employment and political history?

Randall : So employment, I am currently an assistant city attorney for the City of Birmingham. I’ve been there since 2009, I actually got there since before the current administration which took office in 2010. I am also an elected official on the Birmingham Board of Education. I served as the President of the Board in 2013 and 2015. Political affiliation – the good news is that I’m running in a non-partisan race, but I worked on Democratic campaigns. I’ve also been professionally trained to work in campaigns. Strategic Consulting Group, SCG they’re based in Chicago and I got professionally trained in their DC office on K Street, man, 10 years ago, started October 2007. The first race I worked on was Donna Edwards who actually recently lost a U.S. Senate race in Maryland last year, but I worked on her first US Congressional race she unseated a long-term incumbent. I came back home, worked on professional races for two years and started practicing law in 2009.

Steven :  It’s interesting watching the political landscape with all the special elections going on. The Democrats haven’t won any of those yet, they’ve come close

Randall : I believe Georgia has been the most recent one we’ve seen where – I don’t know how that’s gonna look in a runoff

Steven : Yeah that one is going to runoff, and the Kansas one was remarkably close, it’s just insane to watch what’s going on. So why are you running for mayor?

Randall : There’s a long answer for this. I finished college in 2003, 14 years ago. I remember my friends around me, they were kinda like you guys, knew that they were going to a master’s  program, right away, or PHd, or J.D. They all took the MCAT PCAT LSAT, they took all of those tests, but I didn’t. A lot of them went to Capitol Hill or Wall Street or overseas to travel, some went into the military. I packed my bags and I came home because I knew I wanted to be in and around city government. Like I just always knew that, I was a political science undergrad

Steven : Where did you go?

Randall : I went to Morehouse College. I was SGA President. You’re from Alabama so you know this analogy, student government leadership is our varsity sport and so in that space, the whole thing is centered around community service. The whole thing is centered around leadership and so that’s what I pledge. When I came home, I went and knocked on the door of the president of city council and the mayor’s office and they both gave me an opportunity. I got there and I was around City Hall since 2003.
Recently, I would say the combination of being on the school board and being a lawyer for the city, up close, seeing the issues in our city.  I feel like when you are a mayor of a city and your budget is almost half a billion dollars you should be intentional about improving the people’s quality of life. I’m running because I wanna help.  I  think Municipal government is a little different from federal and state government. You can actually have an  impact on people’s lives. There are so many issues in my hometown, dealing with food deserts, crime, people not feeling safe on their porch or their front yard, property value decreasing, homelessness and poverty increasing, crimes against persons, violent crimes, murders increasing. I don’t see any intentionality or sense of urgency at city hall. And I’m there – watching.

This is how I frame that question –  people tell me I should wait until 2021 to run, the seat will be open so I won’t be running against an incumbent and I’ll have all that institutional support. My response is:  Last time I checked, you don’t send a fire truck to a house after it’s burnt down. The kitchen is on fire now. There is a legitimate leadership crisis at city hall and I’m running because I just think there are too many people hurting and I want to help. I’m committed to home. This is not in the interest of going to D.C. or going to Montgomery, this is home. The commitment level is a little different.

Steven : You mentioned the budget for the City of Birmingham. Can you give a description on how the money is spent now and how it would be different if you were mayor?

Randall : Our budget is $426 million. That’s our general fund. Separate from that, [we have] a 2011 a bond referendum passed by voters for $75 million in two phases for a total of $150 million, half of which has been spent. We are looking at almost half a billion dollars. The $426m in the general fund is heavily based in sales tax, we have a 1% occupational tax, and of course we have ad valorem and business and use license tax. In that space, we’ve seen our city center grow, we’ve seen our sales tax base grow, as well as our business license tax base grow.

I fundamentally believe we don’t have have a shortage of money, it’s how the money is being spent. I always compare us to Huntsville, and the reason I do that is because I believe that city and the way their municipal government is run, how money is allocated, it is spent in a more efficient way than Birmingham. We are not efficient in how  we spend tax dollars. There are no priorities. I believe there are no priorities because there is no vision. You don’t have a vision, you don’t have a plan. If you had priorities it would be reflected in the budget how money is being spent. That’s not the case. That’s clearly not reflected in the last seven years of this administration.

So, answering the question of [spending] we need an analogy of Huntsville first. Their budget is $303m dollars. Ours is $426m. Couple things – priorities: Separate from what the state gives the school system of Huntsville, that city administration  gives their school system 20 million dollars from its $303m. From our $426 million dollar budget, we give our school system 1.8.

[Huntsville] from their general fund, infrastructure and basic services: street paving. Nobody else is gonna do that, right? They give over 20 million dollars from their general fund to pave their streets. Out of our general fund? Zero. We depend on one-time money from bonds, so that money is being spent in an election year so you’ll see all the streets paved in an election year and the next four years – why is my street so messed up?  Potholes, right? People aren’t usually friendly about potholes, they usually use something explicit.

The Mayor of Huntsville does not have a permanent security detail, if he needs police security, as he will from time to time as that’s important, they are on loan from the police department at no additional cost to the taxpayer.

Our current administration has spent over a million dollars on a permanent security detail for one fiscal year.  I could go on-and-on. I call it of a combination of an abuse and negligence of tax dollars.

We want to frame everything we do in the city in four areas: public safety – the city’s #1 job, education, small business, and real neighborhood revitalization. That’s everyone’s complaints – streets, curbs, sidewalks, parks, you gotta do it. In my opinion I believe our budget should be centered around those four things.

As a city, we can’t afford to give our school system only 1.8 million dollars. Although it is a separate system and money comes from the state, what the city has said over the last seven years is investing in our youngest generation is not a priority. I will make it a priority and I will show that with additional funding to our school. That doesn’t mean directly giving money to the school system.

When I talk about education, my vision is that we must create early childhood learning centers throughout our city that are investing fully in the whole child, prior to when they enter our system. The biggest gap for children in education is from birth – 5 years of age that we know. Children entering our school system are not prepared, concepts of numbers and words are missing. That gap is too wide. We close that gap with early childhood learning centers. We put money towards those centers, but in addition we leverage the nonprofit, philanthropic, foundation, faith-based, private sector, for-profit lanes and get them the support – let the city show these people that we have skin in the game first.

The second part of this education piece that we fund and make a priority is what I call the Fred Shuttlesworth Opportunity Scholarship. First I [discussed] age birth-5,  now I want to switch to what is the opportunity when children finish out high school? What I firmly believe – well, I worked. I left high school early, every single day of my junior and senior year. I got my first job at 15 and I worked at a grocery store.

What if we allowed [students] to leave early and the city provided a robust trade facility for our juniors and seniors? For the record, we only graduate between 1100-1300 students a year, so that’s a reasonable number, that’s not unmanageable, it’s not too high. When a senior walks across that stage at graduation, we should be able to give our students a diploma in their right hand and some sort of workforce certification in their left hand. So if you choose not to go to college, you can be in line for Alabama Power or AT&T or the gas company. You can go to Hyundai or Mercedes or you can be a welder or an electrician, a plumber, a carpenter. We gotta invest in that. That means putting money into a real trade program and enhancing high school diplomas.

For the ones who do want to go to college, the Fred Shuttlesworth Scholarship, we say, if you live in Birmingham and you attend Birmingham City Schools, the city will provide a tuition scholarship to Jefferson State or Lawson State to continue their workforce training or trade program, and its paid for by us. That needs to be a priority.

What that is saying is – what is the best way to fight crime and poverty? Jobs. We gotta put our people to work. If young people have skills they need, the training they need – If I have employment, I’m less likely to pick up a gun or be illiterate or be in poverty.

Second priority, supporting our small businesses, which is two-fold:
First, automating how our citizens interact with the city. If your business already exists, you should be able to just renew your business license online, maybe you shouldn’t have to come down there, it should be available online. It should be more efficient. Also, from an incubator standpoint, like what the city of Philadelphia does, we need to set some money aside to support businesses as they grow. I believe this should be at least $10 million set aside to help support our small businesses.
So of those areas, in the area of basic services, there is a legitimate gap in our city. Our infrastructure is crumbling because we ignore it. We only do [work] in election years. We have to make it a priority every year. We have to put money from the general fund for street paving. We have to put money from the general fund into curbs and sidewalks and lights. That’s not just bond money, one-time bond money, and you spend it during an election to show people you’re “doing something”. It’s not right. Those complaints don’t stop.

We are talking about, for the entire city of 99 neighborhoods, the largest city in our state, it’s probably at this point, over a 5 year period about $50 million dollars to get our streets paved the way they need to be.

Those are just the priorities that come to the top of my mind. Those are the priorities, supporting education, supporting small business, supporting an investment in our infrastructure.

Please join us here again next week for the second segment in a series of four.

Thanks for reading and listening.