0902coverHere’s something I learned about, appropriately enough, on Facebook: Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak’s face appears on the front of this month’s Governing magazine. Stifle that yawn — for public officials, it’s the equivalent of getting your picture on the cover of Rolling Stone.

Governing, a trade journal of sorts for the — um, how else to put this? — governing classes, typically puts a person’s face on the cover only twice a year, one of those occasions being its “Public Officials of the Year” issue (which this is not). That should make this a rare honor indeed for hizzoner.

However, Rybak’s star turn marks the fourth month in a row, beginning with November’s “Public Officials of the Year” issue, that an individual’s smiling or near-smiling face has graced the cover of Governing. So is Rybak now the national figure in the field of public governance he seems to be, judging by the cover of Governing, or merely the lucky beneficiary of a new design approach?

By e-mail, Governing Editor John Martin clarifies:

While it’s a bit of a fluke that we’ve had four covers in a row picturing individuals, we do expect to be doing more along those lines. … [W]e are always looking for leaders to profile who are doing things that are of interest to other government people, especially including things that are kind of out there on the edge, pushing the envelope, thinking outside the box (did I leave out any cliches?).

As for the cover story, titled “Radical Renewal,” it’s an interesting read that takes as its theme Rybak’s approach to public involvement with private development:

It’s only a slight exaggeration to say Rybak is trying to rewrite the rules of urban economic development. He is trying to prove that it’s possible to be a left-leaning mayor of a left-leaning city and still be both a fiscal conservative and a friend to business and development.

The profile, by staff writer Josh Goodman, includes comments from the mayor and several others who have good things to say about him. ”He matches Minneapolis’ self-image,” Neighborhood Development Center Director Mike Temali told Goodman. “Fit and hip.” Goodman recounts the many redevelopment sights he saw while on a ride-along with Mike Christenson, Minneapolis’ Community Planning and Economic Development director.

But it’s not all positive. The Midtown Public Market, where the story opens (and which Temali’s nonprofit runs), got ”some of the same kinds of public subsidies Rybak tends to disparage elsewhere,” Goodman writes. “[T]he jury is still out on the Global Market. The number of people visiting the market is exceeding expectations. Sales, though, aren’t.”

One blistering quote comes from former City Council Member Jim Niland, though without noting his critical role in helping Rybak get elected in 2001. Niland, now legislative political action director for the Minnesota Council 5 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, has nothing good to say: ”He’s definitely not been a friend of organized labor. He hasn’t lifted a finger for union members.” And City Council Member Lisa Goodman succinctly puts Rybak in his place within Minneapolis’ weak-mayor system of goverment: “I love the mayor. I think he’s great. But the people that do the work here are the City Council.”

One thing the article doesn’t get into is Rybak’s political future, from running for re-election this year to his interest in running for governor in 2010 — an ambition that being on the cover of Governing magazine can’t hurt.

For your reference, here’s the company Rybak just joined. Governing’s cover boys and girls in recent years:

North Carolina Speaker of the House Joe Hackney (Jan. 2009)
New Haven, Ct., Mayor John DeStefano Jr. (Dec. 2008)
Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins (Nov. 2008)
Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, (July 2008)
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (Feb. 2008)
Christine O. Gregoire, governor of Washington state (Nov. 2007)
Massachusetts Chief Information Officer Peter Quinn (May 2006)
Salvatore F. DiMasi, speaker of the Massachusetts House (Nov. 2006)
L. Douglas Wilder, mayor of Richmond, Va., and former governor of the state (June 2005)
Thomas Frieden, MD, New York City health commissioner (Nov. 2005)