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Girard Miller

Girard Miller

Finance Columnist

Girard Miller is the finance columnist for Governing. He is a retired investment and public finance professional and the author of “Enlightened Public Finance” (2019). Miller brings 30 years of experience in public finance and investments as a former Governmental Accounting Standards Board member and ICMA Retirement Corp. president.

Miller writes Governing's bi-weekly newsletter on public finance, which you can sign up for here.

He can be reached at millergirard@yahoo.com. 

Some government employers are exploiting the peculiar rules of public finance to transfer public assets or cash from clever deals to their pension funds. But there’s risk to taxpayers when it’s magic beans and shell games.
It’s the only way to get a bill out of Congress before the fall, given the imperative to get COVID relief done first. Governors and mayors need to understand that it’s a game of chess, not checkers.
A one-size-fits-all approach defies local cost-of-living realities. County-based indexing could help avoid losses of jobs and tax revenues, and it could appeal to policymakers on both sides of the rural-urban divide.
The payoff for states and localities from federal infrastructure legislation is likely to be many times more than COVID stimulus aid. Governors and local leaders need to play their cards wisely.
Working together to create their own alternative to Bitcoin and its copycats could be a way to generate value, at no initial cost, for struggling pension funds. Madisons, anyone?
Vaccines, a new presidency, a reshuffled Congress and a pandemic-shifted economy will transfigure the state and local fiscal landscape.
The COVID-19 pandemic recession has revealed major cracks in our systems of public finance, from the way we tax to the limits of fiscal federalism. We need to get to work on repairs.
Local governments have come to rely more and more on user charges to fund municipal operations. They're being challenged through the lens of equity and social justice, and they warrant a review.
Cities and counties are stepping in to try to preserve their communities' jobs and economies. It looks like it's helping. But the programs need to be designed to prevent mischief and protect taxpayers.
To resolve the stalemate on COVID-19 relief for states and localities, Congress should require a contractual commitment to robust rainy-day funds and promote serious efforts to fix pension underfunding.