On January 2, 1998, Lee P. Brown was inaugurated as the 50th Mayor of the City of Houston. On November 2, 1999, Houston voters overwhelmingly reelected Mayor Brown to a second term.
         Mayor Brown has spent his professional career working to empower people and communities to improve their safety, security, and quality of life. At his inauguration, Mayor Brown outlined a set of five guiding principles. The first, Neighborhood Oriented Government, builds a stronger bond between neighborhoods and City Hall. Recognizing the size and scope of Houston, the city has been divided into 88 super neighborhoods to solve problems at the neighborhood level.
Each super neighborhood has a council and liaison, serving as links between the neighborhood and city government. Mayor Brown has improved access to city government through Town Hall Meetings, where he literally takes city government to the communities, and Mayor's Night In, where Mayor Brown opens up City Hall at night. Mayor Brown stresses the point that city employees are public servants and are expected to deliver city services in a prompt and courteous manner.
         Mayor Brown dedicated his administration to the children of Houston and made providing Opportunities for Youth his second guiding principle. He has lived up to his promise by increasing funds for after-school programs and creating a variety of youth-oriented programs such as the Power Card Challenge, which doubled the number of juvenile library cardholders in its first year. Mayor Brown was named 1999 Politician of the Year by Library Journal for his vision and active support of the library system and the children of Houston.
         Improving Transportation and Infrastructure is Mayor Brown's third guiding principle. He is currently overseeing a $3 billion, five-year Capital Improvement Plan, including a $1.4 billion program for Houston's three major airports, the largest capital improvement project ever launched for Houston's Airport System. The Houston 2000 Transportation Plan will address the city's long-term transportation needs, including light rail.
         Mayor Brown has made Economic Development and International Trade the fourth guiding principle of his administration. More than 150,000 construction permits valued at over $3 billion were issued during fiscal year 1998-1999. Downtown is thriving with more than $1.6 billion in projects under construction or completed and another $1 billion under development. As the driving force behind downtown revitalization, Mayor Brown has been involved in such major downtown projects as the opening of Bayou Place and Sesquicentennial Park; the planned expansion of George R. Brown Convention Center; and the construction of Enron Field, the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts, the Convention Center Hotel, and the Cotswold Project, a plan to improve the streetscape in the northern portion of downtown. Mayor Brown has led several trade missions abroad and is overseeing the effort to bring the 2012 Summer Olympic Games to Houston.
         Mayor Brown's fifth guiding principle, Continuous Management Improvement, focuses on improving the efficiency of every city department. Implementation of Continuous Management Improvement began with an in-depth analysis of all of the city's departments by the Mayor's Transition Team. The team then made recommendations for streamlining and improving the city's delivery of services. Many of the recommendations have been implemented and have already proven effective in improving city government, including a pay raise for police officers, the completion of a master plan for the city's parks system, and the establishment of the Office of the Inspector General to investigate allegations of employee misconduct.
         The son of farm workers, Lee Brown worked his way through college and earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Criminology from Fresno State University in 1961, a Master’s in Sociology from San Jose State University in 1964, and a Master’s (1968) and a Doctorate (1970) in Criminology from the University of California at Berkeley.
         Mayor Brown began his distinguished career in law enforcement in 1960 as a patrolman in San Jose, California. He has served as Sheriff of Multnomah County, Oregon; Commissioner of Public Safety in Atlanta, Georgia; Chief of the Houston Police Department; and Commissioner of the New York City Police Department. In 1993, Brown's success as a crime-fighter was recognized when President Clinton selected him to serve in the cabinet-level position of Director of National Drug Control Policy. Prior to seeking the office of Mayor, Dr. Brown was the Radaslav A. Tsanoff Professor of Public Affairs in the Department of Sociology and a Scholar at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University.
         Mayor Brown has four grown children and eleven grandchildren from his marriage to his late wife, Yvonne. He is now married to Frances Young, a teacher in the Houston Independent School District.