Mark Schwartz

My name is Mark Schwartz, and I am currently serving as the County Manager of Arlington County, Virginia. I wanted to thank the members of the Academy for the honor of joining you in your work. The opportunity to confer, converse and otherwise hobnob with the fellow members of the Academy will help me in my work and hopefully lead to stronger bonds between all the levels of government. In my earlier career I had the honor of working for the Federal government, both in the United States Senate and for 12 years at the Office of Management and Budget. My past 15 years in local government here in Arlington has provided me with the daily opportunity to see how government can do things that will improve the minute-by-minute existence of our residents. Ensuring the basics of government, such as public safety and clean water and strong systems of public health work well and serve all fairly is an incredible challenge. I look forward to learning from each of you the lessons you have gleaned and I hope to further the chance for our Federal partners to see local governments as customers and vice-versa.. Work in the public sector is especially challenging these days, but at the local level there is a continuing appreciation by people for the good things government can do. I want to learn more as a fellow and ensure that the local perspective is "the elephant in the room" when it comes to Federal decision making.