Little-used foundation could see expansion under Adler
Mayor’s Better Austin Foundation now has one paid staffer.
Laura Hernandez is the first and only paid staffer of the Mayor’s Better Austin Foundation, and it’s her job to figure out what the foundation should do.
The little-used foundation, started under now-state Sen. Kirk Watson to support com- munity causes when he was mayor, came into the spotlight earlier this year when Mayor Steve Adler proposed using it to raise money to hire more advisers for his office. Adler abandoned that funding plan — but not the foundation.
Adler and his wife, Diane Land, are the foundation’s only donors, contributing $40,000 so far this year. That helps pay for the $65,000 salary of Hernandez, a former Adler campaign staffer who now serves as the foundation’s executive director.
Adler said he wants Hernandez to help determine how the foundation can be used. Similar foundations in Los Angeles and New York City have raised money to pay for projects that are important to the mayor.
“I really haven’t gone back to try and figure that out because I’ve been spend-
ing so much time on other things,” Adler said. “But I hope to be able to get back to that, because I think that’s a missed opportunity.”
Hernandez said her job is “evolving,” but she sees the foundation working on specific projects that align with mayoral goals and perhaps adding more staff. As for the question of where the foundation will get its funding in the future, Hernandez said she’s leaving that up to Adler and Land.
Adler did acknowledge that funding the foundation out of his own pocket “does not work long term for the city.”
In the beginning, Adler had envisioned Land and Mark Yznaga, the husband of Council Member Ann Kitchen, as unpaid foundation staffers. That hasn’t happened though.
One of Hernandez’s duties is managing a fund Adler set up as part of his initiative to house all local homeless veterans by Veterans Day. The fund could pay landlords if a veteran leaves damage in a unit, or for a motel voucher for a veteran who has a unit lined up but can’t move in right away, Hernandez said. As of Thursday, the fund had raised $67,000.
Hernandez said she is also working on the mayor’s “social innovation” agenda.
She’s putting together a committee that is researching such efforts in Austin, including studies of whether the “pay for success” model could work for programs such as a city teen pregnancy initiative or homelessness reduction initiatives from the nonprofit Ending Community Homelessness Coalition (ECHO). Under the model, a private lender contributes money to expand a program targeted at a particular social issue and is later paid back by a government entity if the program is successful.
Hernandez reports to the foundation’s three-person board of trustees: Kerry Tate, Cookie Ruiz and District Judge Darlene Byrne, who are all appointed by Adler. Hernandez said she works with Tate, who is president of the board, to decide which projects to take on.
Hernandez and all the trustees are required by foundation bylaws to abide by the city’s conflict-of-interest rules and submit the same financial disclosure forms as top city officials, such as the city manager and city department heads, she said.
Adler’s predecessor, Lee Leffingwell, said he used the foundation to support minor initiatives such as AustinCorps, which gives students the opportunity to learn more about local government through meetings at City Hall and internships.
Former Mayor Lee Cooke, who served from 1988 to 1991, said he strove to raise $100,000 annually for a different mayor’s fund that paid for contributions to civic organizations, his travel expenses and a staffer who worked on a campaign for a bond election to build the convention center.
“I wasn’t a rich guy,” Cooke said. “I didn’t come into office with a lot of money, and I didn’t have a lot of money. ... So this fund helped me do things that were almost expected of the mayor but very hard for me to finance.”
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti launched the Mayor’s Fund for Los Angeles in June 2014 to support private-public partnerships targeting key initiatives of the mayor’s office, such as youth employment programs. The Los Angeles Times reported in March the fund had raised $5.2 million.
In New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio has appointed his wife, Chirlane McCray, to run his mayoral foundation, which has raised more than $30 million since de Blasio took office, according to Politico. The fund supports a variety of projects, from mental health services for low-income residents to support for people affected by recent Manhattan building collapses.
Contact Lilly Rockwell at 512-445-3632. Twitter: @LillyRockwell Contact Andra Lim at 512-445-3972. Twitter: @AndraCLim