A city mired in budget difficulties, beset by poverty and crime, and shedding people quickly—sounds like D.C. in the 1980 and 90s, doesn’t it? It was, but it’s the situation that Detroit currently finds itself in. But according to former Mayor Anthony Williams, there’s an example to follow in D.C.’s turnaround.

Williams was in Detroit yesterday, where he gave leaders of the troubled Midwestern city something of a pep talk, according to MLive.

“I see many more similarities than I see contrasts,” former District of Columbia Mayor Anthony Williams told more than 400 people today at the Detroit Regional Chamber’s inaugural “Detroit Business Conference.”

“Because I’m in Detroit, I love to give this example,” he said. “I felt to get out of our situation in Washington, D.C., we had to get out of this mentality that we were an overloaded, under powered, badly driven car on a bad road.

“So what’s the bad road? The bad road is it’s tough being a city because the economic logic and the social logic are working against one another…You’ve got to start doing things differently.”

The similarities between D.C. and Detroit are numerous, including a possible state-run financial control board for the city.

Williams is largely credited for taking a bloated government bureaucracy that couldn’t even effectively collect taxes and streamlining it during his two terms in office. Since then, he has remained quietly out of the limelight, but recently became more publicly engaged in D.C. affairs when he was appointed to lead the influential Federal City Council.

The connection between D.C. and Detroit goes beyond the theoretical, though. Williams’ former City Administrator, Robert Bobb, served as emergency financial manager of the Detroit public school system from 2009 to 2011, where he was commended and reviled for closing schools and slashing staff.