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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 taxes are more impaired by the pandemic recession than others, and each jurisdiction is impacted differently, but many will still suffer revenue slumps into next year and even beyond.
Europe is heading in that direction. If the idea begins to catch on here, states and localities will need to be at the federalism policymaking table to share in the revenues.
Washington's wrangling over the politics of public education will put our kids and communities at risk unless politicians face up to fiscal and physical realities. They need to get it done now.
Despite federal scaremongering about state and local pensions, the problem for now isn't their balance sheets. It's the budget vise that is likely to tempt some public employers to cut funding corners.
The program, a cluster of tax loopholes, is making fat cats fatter without doing much about racial inequities and urban joblessness. There are ways to reform it to benefit those it was touted to help.
Rural America won't like it, but there are good arguments for Congress to provide direct aid to public transit systems and to municipalities that rely heavily on the hospitality taxes vacationers pay.
With an expanded role, they could serve as an efficient conduit between local governments of all sizes and federal financial resources for revenue shortfalls and infrastructure.
Locally focused investors support the innovative entrepreneurial ecosystems that will produce high-paying jobs in the post-pandemic world. Public officials can learn a lot from their angel investors.
If businesses looking to reopen are going to be shielded from coronavirus-related lawsuits by their workers and customers, there should be stringent, OSHA-style regulatory enforcement.
If state and local governments and their employees become pawns in a Beltway ideological battle, the voting could turn on issues of federalism. And health care could be the issue that creates a tidal wave.