Improving Policies, Transportation & Education: Interview with Ann Marit Saebones, former Mayor of Oslo, Norway

Q. When were you Mayor of Oslo?

A. I was Mayor for four years, from January 1992 to December 1995. I was elected in 1991 and I came straight into the Mayor's seat without having previously served on the City Council. In the 1995 election we were defeated by the Conservatives; who drew support not so much from my party as from its coalition partners. Later on, I became chairperson of the Labor Party caucus [bloc] in the City Council, a position I held from 1997 until 2003.

Serving on the City Council as a Labor Party member

Q. So you actually started out as Mayor and then went to the City Council?

A. Yes, in opposition. In Norway, you do not run for mayor as an individual; you run as part of a party slate. A party officially decides who is to be mayor only after it has won an election. But, in actuality, parties make their choices known before the elections so that people know who the nominee is. If you are the nominee in an election and your party is defeated, then it's expected that you will serve in the opposition.

Q. What previous background of yours led to your being chosen by your party to be its designee for Mayor?

A. Well, I had been a Labor Party activist for many years. For a brief period I also had been what we call an alternate in Parliament. I also think I had become fairly well known in my capacity as the social services Ombudsperson for the city of Oslo. So I was chosen as a candidate for mayor because they thought I was something of a known quantity.

Q. As a person with a disability, do you think your election as Mayor had an impact among your fellow politicians?

A. Among my fellow politicians, certainly. But among the population as a whole, I don't think so. After I was elected Mayor, and even when I was running, I had lots of interviews, where they tried to show what kind of person I am. I talked very freely about my disability. I think it's very important that I do so because my disability is not readily apparent to many people--I can walk fairly well with my leg, and my hand is easy to overlook. So I think it was very important in all my interviews to talk about my disability, what growing up with a disability was like, what kinds of trouble it caused, and what society can be expected to do about it. So I never tried to hide it. On the contrary, I deliberately highlighted it.

Impact on policies

Q. What impact did that have on your policy agenda, on how you pushed that agenda, or on the Council?

A. First of all, I should add that in the Norwegian political system, it's very important to work through your party, because what a party puts into its program is what it works to accomplish at the local or national level. So I've always found it's very essential to be involved in developing my party's program because that's where we define what we are going to do if we come to power. My party had a fairly good program on disability, but the effect my disability had in the City Council was that when we proposed something on disability, it was very difficult for the other parties to reject it. When I gave a speech after becoming Chair and said we are proposing this and this, it was very difficult for them to reject it.

Q. Because they would in a sense be rejecting you?

A. In a way. One of the last things that I did, not as mayor, but as opposition leader before I left the City Council, was to propose that purchases by the city be limited to items which are usable by disabled people so that disabled people should not be discriminated against and excluded. To be honest, I don't think that Council members knew what they were doing, but they voted for it. So it's there, and it's there for organizations of people with disabilities. While I don't expect that the city as such will push it, I think that the organizations of disabled people might, so that was an achievement. And there were lots of smaller measures which we debated. But I think the biggest problem in the city of Oslo, which I'm sure you have identified while walking and driving around the city, is that that it's not very accessible to people in wheelchairs or blind people; it's very bad.

Q. Well, part of it is those cobblestones.

A. That is bad, I agree, but they are in very few places. But I think that what's worse is that the trams [trolley cars] and buses are not accessible. That's very bad. Some of them are accessible -- the city decided some years ago that all new trams and busses bought would be accessible, but I think the process has been going very, very slowly.

Transportation for Norwegians with disabilities

Q. And what do people generally do? Do they drive?

A. No. In Oslo we have established a transportation service that anyone who is in a wheelchair, has difficulty walking, is blind, or has difficulty learning, can call for a taxi and pay the same fare as they would pay on fixed-route transit buses. In Oslo all people up to age 67 who have been found eligible can use it almost as often as they want to, as long as they don't overdo it and take rides all day.

Q. We call it paratransit. But the problem is you have separate parallel systems, but not one integrated single system.

A. I agree with you, but that is how we have dealt with it. As everybody knows, I think, I'm working to make the bus system and trams and trains and subway accessible. And I think it will slowly happen, but in the meantime we have to operate the two systems in parallel, because it will take time to gradually replace existing inaccessible equipment.

Q. Do you have a deadline in terms of a time limit for all that?

A. No, we don't.

Q. But any new equipment that you buy in Oslo has to be accessible?

A. Yes, so they say. But the issue was also addressed by a national commission, which proposed a timetable for improving accessibility in a number of areas, including housing and several modes of public transit, but the government didn't accept the proposal, naturally. So there's no real timetable.

Q. Isn't Norway in the European Union (EU)?

A. No. We have had two plebiscites on whether to join, and both lost by very narrow margins.

Q. Because the EU has mandated that its member countries make their transportation systems accessible by a certain deadline.

A. Well, I think it will happen regardless in Norway.

Q. Is there an ombudsperson for disability in Norway like there is in Sweden?

A. No, there is not. But they are working to get one. An official commission has recommended that there be one and also that we should have a law against discrimination.

Q. So you don't have that yet?

A. No, we don't have that yet, although many people with disabilities use social services and thus have recourse to the social services Ombudsperson.

Q. So there's an Ombudsperson for health and social services?

A. Yes, in several cities and I think in almost all counties.

Q. Is there a comparable position at the national level?

A. No.

Education and deinstitutionalization

Q. What disability-related policies or issues were you able to influence?

A. I had to stand on my party's program, as I said earlier, but we always asked for more money for transportation for people with disabilities. And then we successfully argued for making buses and trams accessible. We tried to fight to maintain home services for people with disabilities. In Norway we've been moving away from placing people in institutions and toward placing them in the community, and there's always a fight over how much money to spend on that. I think that accessibility and home care were the most important issues.

And then, of course, schools should educate everyone. In Norway, the city or the community authority is responsible for the schools even if you have the curriculum given to you by the state. There's money for special education in schools. But we always have to fight over how much money is actually spent on it. But the law in Norway is very clear--everyone has a right to go to ordinary [regular] school. If you need special education, you get it in your ordinary classroom.

Q. So you don't really have a separate special school system, like special schools for the blind, etc.?

A. We have some special schools for the blind because that's what some prefer, but they don't have to go to them.

Q. They have a choice.

A. Yes, and deaf people usually want to go to special schools for the deaf because they are attracted by the sign language environment and deaf culture. On the other hand, some people send their [deaf] children to ordinary schools. But I think the most revolutionary change has been the trend toward keeping people with what used to be called mental retardation in the community instead of putting them in institutions. In Norway, everybody with a cognitive disability has the right to have an apartment of their own or to share one with four to five other people, with the government bearing the cost. Then the fight is over how much support to provide. But they all have the right to go to ordinary schools.

Q. What about transportation for those kids who go to ordinary schools?

A. They have special transportation, which they can use through college.

Q. How are your colleges and universities at accommodating students with disabilities? Do they provide easy access?

A. Some people have complained that insufficient accommodations have been made when exams were given.

Q. They are not given special help?

A. They do get special help and more time, but that doesn't satisfy them. I think that, compared to the rest of the world at least, we have good provisions for financial aid, but then we have the problem of accessibility again. Auditoriums [lecture halls], for example, often have steps and tiers of seating. The back of a lecture hall may be accessible to students in wheelchairs, but an instructor in a wheelchair would have difficulty getting down to the front. Blind students who need Braille face the problem of getting their school books after sighted students get theirs. I understand that this problem may be eliminated with the introduction of computerized Braille printers which can produce Braille text in a more timely fashion. This is also a problem in primary grades, where it is hard for blind pupils to get education materials in alternative formats. When I headed the National Council on Disability, we said to the government that it is discrimination and a violation of their human rights to provide school books later to some students than to others... There is no use going to school if you don't get your school books at the same time as your peers. So you see that even though the law makes it very clear that everybody is has a right to an education, exercising that right can still be difficult [for some].

Q. Do you have a mechanism for providing readers for blind students?

A. I think so. We have books on tape, etc. In Norway you can get support services even if you need them at work, I think. But these are very difficult and complex issues, and while I knew the rules at one time, I don't know them now.

Q. Do you have a problem with disabled youth dropping out of school?

A. Using the capabilities of children and youth with disabilities to best advantage is a huge problem in Norway, too. It's not so much that they drop out of school, but rather that they don't get jobs anyway. I don't have precise figures, but I think most children and youth with disabilities finish school, in one way or another, because we have such a just educational system that that there are ways (such as vocational schools) of getting through it successfully even if you aren't academically inclined. The trouble comes when they enter the job market and can't get a job, notwithstanding the governmental agencies that are supposed to help them find one. So what we are seeing now is whole generations of children and youth who have gone through the educational system and are used to having social interactions and being accepted by their non-disabled peers, and suddenly they find themselves excluded, which is very hard on them. So the trouble, as I see it, is that we are not succeeding in getting these students into jobs, so they go on social security for the rest of their lives.

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