A Legacy of Support

Sixty years of environmental, energy, resiliency, and economic mobility/opportunity programs through ICMA

For the past 60 years, ICMA has managed a multitude of programs supporting local leaders, managers, staff, and stakeholders with technical assistance, training, knowledge resources, and peer-to-peer connectivity on environmental, energy, resiliency, and more recently, economic mobility and opportunity.

Much of this assistance has been enabled through partnerships with federal agencies, foundations, corporate sponsors, and other types of external financial assistance.

Some of the association’s first grants to provide technical assistance were received in the 1970s from the newly formed U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). ICMA used these and other resources to produce technical reports for the Management Information System to help managers with the emerging and growing responsibilities that environmental compliance required.

From this early legacy of support, ICMA has continued to leverage external funding to support local government leaders and managers with resources, training, and technical assistance on land use strategies, renewable energy, disaster resiliency, and most recently, economic mobility and opportunity.

Economic Redevelopment

Throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s, ICMA held numerous multi-year cooperative agreements with EPA to produce training manuals and guidance documents on brownfields cleanup and redevelopment. A well-regarded resource for many years, ICMA’s Brownfields Redevelopment: A Guidebook for Local Governments and Communities provided practical programmatic, policy, legal, and regulatory guidance for leaders, managers, and staff in cities and counties. Today, ICMA’s main economic redevelopment program is the National Brownfields Training Conference, a biennial event that attracts more than 2,500 attendees and features 150 learning opportunities. Brownfields 2025 takes place in Chicago, August 5–8. Since 2003, more than 55,000 people have been trained on effective strategies and approaches for reusing formerly used commercial and industrial properties.

In 2025, along with the National League of Cities, National Association of Counties, National Association of Development Organizations, ICMA is supporting the International Economic Development Council’s Economic Recovery Corps (ERC) initiative. ERC is a pilot project to place economic recovery specialists in distressed communities. More than 60 organizations, cities, counties, tribal communities, development districts, and councils of government are hosting ERC fellows who are focusing their efforts on impactful economic development projects in a jurisdiction or region.

Tapping the Sun

Since 2009, ICMA has partnered with the U.S. Department of Energy to deliver assistance to local governments mostly on solar energy deployments, but more recently on wind and EV charging infrastructure.

The SunShot Solar Outreach Partnership (2010–2016) was an outreach, training, and technical assistance project to help local governments optimize their planning, zoning, permitting, and inspection practices to foster growth of rooftop solar projects in their communities. More than 3,500 local government professionals were trained on strategies to increase solar deployments in their communities.

Similarly, the Solar@Scale program has helped local governments with strategies, policies, and programs, focusing on larger utility scale or community solar projects on underutilized land and other local government assets. The project, in conjunction with the American Planning Association, produced a highly regarded guidebook for local governments, relevant for any community looking for leading practices on large-scale ground-mounted solar developments.

SolSmart

SolSmart (solsmart.org) is an ongoing effort that recognizes cities, counties, towns, and townships that have created policies and programs that support the growth of local solar markets, jobs, and economic opportunity in their communities. The program has provided technical assistance to hundreds of communities and officially designed more than 550 as “SolSmart.”

Disaster Resiliency and Recovery

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, ICMA led the development and implementation of the Restoration conferences in New Orleans in 2005 and 2006. The events, which provided training and peer networking opportunities for more than 1,500 attendees, were focused on long-term community and economic restoration in the aftermath of natural disasters. More recently, ICMA supported the Puerto Rico recovery process following Hurricane Maria in 2017. The Puerto Rico Municipal Assessment Project engaged the expertise of Spanish-speaking members, staff, and volunteers from partnering organizations to conduct service and governance assessments of the commonwealth’s 78 municipalities and develop a roadmap toward improved resilience in the future.

In 2019, ICMA and faculty from the University of Georgia and Binghamton University conducted a national survey on the financial strategies and local government policies and programs in place for post-disaster economic and community recovery. The results of the survey were eventually used to create a report on disaster recovery responses by local government funded by the IBM Center for the Business of Government. Many local governments have used the results of the survey to benchmark their practices, using the findings of this seminal study as a baseline.

During this same time frame, ICMA commissioned a research program led by ICMA member Dr. Ron Carlee to profile ICMA members that have had to manage a natural or human-caused disaster. A master report and a complimentary toolkit resource were created to support local government managers.

Economic Mobility and Opportunity

In 2023, ICMA was invited to join a community of practice focused on elevating economic mobility and opportunity (EMO) and was provided funding by the Gates Foundation. Economic mobility and opportunity is defined as the ability of individuals and generations to move up the economic ladder over time, a concept often explained colloquially as “doing better than your parents.”

Because local governments are uniquely positioned to influence conditions that make it possible for all residents and households to access opportunities and get ahead, ICMA has provided subgrants to 40 member-led communities to advance a local assessment, planning process, or program aimed at boosting upward mobility of residents. Through these relatively modest investments, communities have explored local entrepreneurship, caregiving, and housing affordability as solutions to boost upward mobility for their jurisdictions most socioeconomically challenged populations. 

New Worlds of Service?

The past 25 years have brought unexpected and sometimes unfamiliar challenges for local governments to manage. ICMA’s Local Government Reimagined Initiative provides the framework for innovative research, technical assistance, and training. Cities, counties, towns, and townships will be tested by new opportunities, changing technology, and other developments that are unlikely to be fully covered by education and core management training. As the second quarter of the twenty-first century begins, ICMA is positioning itself to better meet our members’ needs with more focus on innovation in local government leadership, management, and service delivery.

Learning in Action

Making connections through ICMA professional development

When people come together to learn and grow, the connections they make can last a lifetime. ICMA’s professional development team is working on a robust portfolio of programs to help local government professionals connect, share their stories, and work together to build stronger communities.

Lessons from History

In June 2025, ICMA will gather a full cohort on the battleground for the Gettysburg Leadership Institute where modern-day leadership lessons are drawn from the strife our nation experienced more than 160 years ago. The Gettysburg Leadership Institute is a perennial favorite and has graduated more than 385 participants. Registration is now being accepted for the September cohort.

Members have been asking about another popular program—the Williamsburg Leadership Institute. ICMA is happy to report that this popular program is undergoing a redesign and will be back next spring. The team is also exploring options for additional leadership institutes to be developed across the country.

Equipping the Next Generation

The Leadership ICMA cohort came together again recently in an online workshop to explore community engagement, one of 12 topic areas they will study in this year-long program of in-person and online programming. Speaking of leadership, planning is under way for the reboot of the Emerging Leaders Development Institute, slated to relaunch in January 2026 as a six-month experience for early-career professionals.

Up-and-coming supervisors honed their skills this month with the six-part Effective Supervisory Practices Training Series based on ICMA’s bestselling book. Budget managers came together for the Budgeting Guide Training Series, based on the fourth edition of ICMA’s Budgeting Guide for Local Governments.

Collaborating for Innovation

ICMA collaborated with the National Civic League to jointly produce the Better Public Meetings Training Series, a four-part online workshop to promote civility and meaningful dialogue when meeting with the community. ICMA also joined forces with Brian Elms of Change Agents Training to deliver the ICMA Innovation Bootcamp, an intensive online workshop that teaches process improvement and workflow management. Due to their popularity, both programs will be offered again in the coming months.

Connecting at Conference

This summer, ICMA’s instructional designers will be hard at work on micro-certifications that we’ll deliver at the start of the upcoming ICMA Annual Conference, October 25–29, in Tampa/Hillsborough County, Florida, USA. There will be 18 micro-certifications provided on Saturday and Sunday as the conference begins. For a sneak peek at this year’s topics, visit conference.icma.org and look for micro-certificates under the program schedule. Did you know that you can train your team with micro-certifications at your location? Visit icma.org/careers-learning for more information on micro-certifications such as Leading with Excellence and Leader as Coach.