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Frank Shafroth

Columnist

Frank Shafroth is the director of the Center for State and Local Leadership at George Mason University, where he is also an assistant professor, and is an adjunct professor in the Graduate School of Public Policy at George Washington University. He has served as the director of federal policy and intergovernmental relations for the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board, was chief of staff for U.S. Rep. James Moran, was director of policy and federal relations for both the National Governors Association and the National League of Cities, and was assistant counsel for the U.S. Senate Banking Committee. He is a regular columnist for State Tax Notes and an attorney. He is currently heading a project for the MacArthur Foundation on the topic of severe municipal fiscal stress.

No one really knows what might happen to San Bernardino if the California city fails to meet a May 30 deadline in its bankruptcy case.
In many ways, its challenges are more serious than Detroit's, threatening its aspirations to be a global city.
On-demand services like Uber and Airbnb will force state and local governments to rethink taxes, zoning and retirement.
Questions loom about who will pay for the fallout of a national health crisis and what kind of impact it could have on credit ratings.
As fire departments’ costs have increased in recent years, their volunteers have drastically dropped.
Localities are forced to deal with much of the problems associated with fracking, while states and the federal government rake in all the revenue.
Wall Street can be hard on a state that moves to keep its local governments solvent or help them through bankruptcy. But it's a chance that some states have decided is worth taking.
It’s not that governments don’t want to give the public the services they demand, it’s that they increasingly can’t afford to -- even by raising taxes.
There’s a lot America can learn from these two countries about how to avert municipal bankruptcies.
Smart state leaders are recognizing that it costs a lot less to keep a struggling city, county or school district out of trouble in the first place.