Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) announced Tuesday her five-year economic development plan to make the city more competitive and more inclusive. She wants to grow the city’s private-sector economy by 20 percent to $100 billion and reduce unemployment to below 10 percent in every ward and across racial demographics and educational attainment levels in the next five years.
The mayor’s 105-page plan focuses on supporting the industries that have served the city well so far (hospitality and tourism, real estate, health care, etc.) and on creating new opportunities in areas that would build on existing market strengths (cybersecurity technology, health-care data analysis, autonomous vehicle innovations, etc.).
The Urban Institute helped the city develop the economic growth indicators for the plan.
The Urban Institute, a think tank founded by President Lyndon Johnson in 1968 to focus on social and economic policy, gets around 43 percent of its funding from the federal government and another 40 percent from foundations. The remainder comes from a mix of its endowment fund, nonprofits, universities, state and local governments, corporations, individuals, international organizations, and foreign entities.
Specific funders include: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, JPMorgan Chase, MacArthur Foundation, Rockefeller Foundations, Citi Foundation, ConAgra Food Foundation, World Bank, H&R Block, MITRE Corporation, E*TRADE Financial, Goldman Sachs, Hudson Institute, Medtronic, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Quicken Loans, University of Pennsylvania, University of Virginia, and the state of Hawaii.
Federal donors include the International Revenue Service (IRS) and the Library of Congress, as well as the US Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, State, Justice, Education, Health and Human Services (HHS), and Housing and Urban Development (HUD).