| However, the data showed that job training programs for inner-city young men didn’t make them better off – at least not in the amount of money they earned. So I wanted to see why this was and began to work in a program teaching inner-city young men how to use computers. We were funded to conduct long-term follow-up to help the young people navigate the working world and I conducted research that led to more funding and showed promising results.
After a few years of this, I earned my Master of Public Administration degree from New York University and applied these skills at the New York City Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget. There I worked analyzing parking violations (a $400 million revenue source), capital transportation and the $100 billion pension systems. While at OMB I was able to climb the cables of the Brooklyn Bridge and ride in the wheelhouse of the Staten Island Ferry.
Then my life changed, I had a son and decided to move back to my home state of Minnesota (I grew up in Duluth). I worked for a company called Evensen Dodge (later purchased by Public Financial Management) that helped municipalities issue debt and I became a Certified Independent Public Financial Advisor. I helped the Washington County (MN) Housing and Redevelopment Authority work out of a tough financing situation through negotiations with the primary bond holder of a financial instrument that was not solvent. This financial instrument (bond) threatened to impede the HRA’s housing efforts for years to come if we hadn’t been able to bring the financing back to solvency.
I continued as a financial advisor and also began working more with PFM's Strategic Consulting Group based in Philadelphia. SC worked focused on my first love, governmental budgets. I have completed many activity based cost analyses and non-tax revenue studies for governments throughout the country, including such places as Baltimore, MD; Saint Johns County, Florida, Macomb County, Michigan along with Minneapolis and Saint Paul. In addition, I have worked on major projects for improving budgets for places like Memphis (TN), Erie County (NY), and Pittsburgh (PA). Along with this comprehensive budget work I had a major part in a project evaluating the economic development investments, more than $1 billion, of New York State’s Centers of Excellence program. I focused on Buffalo’s Center for Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences and Rochester’s Center for Optoelectronics and MEMS. It was a great learning experience and provided excellent value to the State.
As part of all of this work I developed interesting ways to measure governmental performance and cost. Particularly as it relates to Police calls. Interestingly, I was able to get an article published in the October (2008) Government Finance Review – the professional Journal of the Government Finance Officers Association on our measurement techniques for the Saint Paul Fee Study that allowed us to measure the difference in cost for addresses that had a liquor license and those that did not. In the June (2009) issue there was an article on our measurement techniques for how the cost of service for blocks in Baltimore (MD) changes correlated with the number of vacant and unsafe properties the block contains.
With PSG I was delighted to be able to work with the Public Strategies Group project on the Minnesota State Budget (Minnesota Bottom Line) and am happy I was able to contribute. |
