If we’re going back in history to look for potential upside, [Tom L. Johnson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_L._Johnson) deserves a look. He ran on a campaign focusing on the cost of people’s biggest and most necessary expense (streetcars) and completely transformed the national conversation around monopolies, transformed the city at a time of rapid industrialization, and is now known as the best mayor not named La Guardia in American history.
> The new administration paved hundreds of miles of streets and expanded the city’s park system, building a large number of playgrounds, ball fields and other facilities. To popular acclaim, the mayor tore up all the ‘Keep off the Grass’ signs in the city parks
> Rubbish collection, then in private hands, had been a big campaign issue. Johnson eliminated the haulers’ franchises and replace them with a municipal department; he hired back all the men who had lost their jobs, and demonstrated how a public service could provide better performance at lower cost. In keeping with the administration’s focus on public health, a street cleaning force was started, and the city’s Water Department was depoliticized and vastly improved. Public bathhouses were built in the poorest neighborhoods; some of these buildings survive today.
> Johnson took up the cause of municipal ownership not only in streetcars, but electric power, to bring down rates by offering competition to the monopoly private utility. He founded the Municipal Light and Power Company, and though political opposition kept him from expanding it, the next Progressive mayor, Newton D. Baker, built a new plant that opened in 1914 as the biggest public utility in the U.S. “Muny Light” (now Cleveland Public Power) brought important savings on the city’s own electric bills, and those of residents fortunate enough to have access to the service, while it forced the private competitor to keep its own rates low.
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If we’re going back in history to look for potential upside, [Tom L. Johnson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_L._Johnson) deserves a look. He ran on a campaign focusing on the cost of people’s biggest and most necessary expense (streetcars) and completely transformed the national conversation around monopolies, transformed the city at a time of rapid industrialization, and is now known as the best mayor not named La Guardia in American history.
> The new administration paved hundreds of miles of streets and expanded the city’s park system, building a large number of playgrounds, ball fields and other facilities. To popular acclaim, the mayor tore up all the ‘Keep off the Grass’ signs in the city parks
> Rubbish collection, then in private hands, had been a big campaign issue. Johnson eliminated the haulers’ franchises and replace them with a municipal department; he hired back all the men who had lost their jobs, and demonstrated how a public service could provide better performance at lower cost. In keeping with the administration’s focus on public health, a street cleaning force was started, and the city’s Water Department was depoliticized and vastly improved. Public bathhouses were built in the poorest neighborhoods; some of these buildings survive today.
> Johnson took up the cause of municipal ownership not only in streetcars, but electric power, to bring down rates by offering competition to the monopoly private utility. He founded the Municipal Light and Power Company, and though political opposition kept him from expanding it, the next Progressive mayor, Newton D. Baker, built a new plant that opened in 1914 as the biggest public utility in the U.S. “Muny Light” (now Cleveland Public Power) brought important savings on the city’s own electric bills, and those of residents fortunate enough to have access to the service, while it forced the private competitor to keep its own rates low.
!ping GEORGISTS