MADISON, Wis. — Cincinnati Mayor Charlie Luken wants the U.S. Conference of Mayors to take an active role in race relations nationally — and he wants to help lead the effort.

        “I think the conference is in the best position to address it, because the mayors really are a great cross-section of America,” Mr. Luken said Sunday at the conference's annual meeting here.

BIG IDEAS

Small-town mayor gets big ideas at meeting    MADISON, Wis. — Among the 250 mayors gathering here this weekend for their annual meeting are some of the most powerful and influential people in America.     San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown Jr. is here. So is Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, made famous by the recent ABC documentary series Boston 24/7.     And then there's Donna Lajcak, mayor of Loveland.     She doesn't have the entourage of bodyguards, staffers and lobbyists that her big-city colleagues do, and she drove eight hours from Cincinnati with her husband to save money.     But Mrs. Lajcak does go to the same committee meetings and has access to the same high-level federal officials.     She expects to come back to Loveland today with a butterfly-print handbag full of information that she'll pass out to other city officials, information on community-oriented policing grants for the police chief, and community development ideas for the city manager.     Mrs. Lajcak doesn't have voting power at the conference. Only cities above 30,000 population get a vote, and Loveland, at 11,000, checks in as an associate member.     Still, the mayor thinks there are benefits of membership.     “I just think it's so important for mayors of smaller towns to mingle with the mayors of bigger cities, because we all face the same problems — even if it's on a smaller scale,” she said. “And to have access to their decision-making and their ideas and leadership is inspiring.”

        “At a minimum, I think there's a tremendous opportunity for us to get together and talk about the best practices in the area of race relations,” he said.

        Mr. Luken likely will return to Cincinnati today with no firm commitment from his fellow mayors. But he's encouraged by the initial response.

        “My opinion is that it will be well-received,” said J. Thomas Cochran, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based mayors' group. “We want to give the mayor of Cincinnati the opportunity to better define what he's requesting.”

        What Mr. Luken is requesting is this: A task force that would bring mayors together — preferably in Cincinnati, but not necessarily — and get them to put their heads together on issues ranging from poverty to policing. They are issues that can often divide whites from African-Americans.

        And Mr. Luken thinks other cities may be able to learn from Cincinnati's experience.

        As mayor of Cincinnati last year, the conservative Democrat presided over the city's worst rioting since the civil rights era following the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man by a Cincinnati officer.

        Since then, the city has signed an agreement with the U.S. Justice Department over the use of force by police, and has settled a lawsuit over alleged racial profiling with a groundbreaking “collaborative agreement” on police-community relations.

        But some emerging African-American groups aren't satisfied with the progress being made, and are pushing a boycott of the city.

        “The problem we have in Cincinnati today is that we have so many people who are only interested in winning the argument,” Mr. Luken said in his hotel lobby Sunday.

        He hopes the mayors' association — a bipartisan group that prides itself on being on the front lines of the nation's wars on crime, drugs and poverty — can cut through the ideological debate to find more pragmatic solutions.

        The mayors' conference has been active in civil rights from its creation in 1932, Mr. Cochran said. President Kennedy came to the annual meeting in Hawaii in 1963 to ask the mayors to support his civil-rights platform, and the conference was a key part of President Clinton's race relations program in 1998.

        Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, the conference's new president, stopped short of committing to a specific initiative on race relations when he outlined his agenda of housing, education and health care this weekend.

        But Mr. Menino said race relations play a significant part of the work of mayors around the country.

        “Race relations is No.1. It's part of everything we do,” he said.

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