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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. 

If a congressional debt ceiling deadlock persists and capital markets seize up, states and localities will still have to pay their bills. Public financiers need to be ready to adjust their portfolios to establish a liquid cash buffer.
A new federal law will eventually make some data searches and comparisons easier, but implementation will be a challenge. Software vendors will be staking their claims, but public-sector finance associations should take the lead.
Disinflation and economic deceleration will dominate state and local budgets and investments. Cash is king, at least for a while. Payroll costs will outrace revenues. It’s going to be a year for muddling through.
Inflation punished Wall Street and Main Street, and public financiers who ignored it squandered billions. Congress passed two bills important to states and localities. And pensions took a hit, but taxpayers won’t feel that pain for years.
Inflation is pressuring state and local employers to grant big cost-of-living increases. But they’ll need to keep in mind the prospect of diminishing revenues in coming fiscal years.
States and local governments should craft coordinated policies that promote housing construction and first-time ownership. A winning formula includes tax relief for buyers and rebated permit fees for builders.
States are sending billions out to households in one form or another. But states don’t print money; they just shuffle it around. The payments amount to a rounding error in the overall inflation picture.
Tax-exempt issuers’ costs have shifted upward dramatically this year as the Federal Reserve has pushed interest rates higher to fight inflation. It’s time to re-strategize debt management programs.
With inflation taking root, state and local treasurers were warned of the risks of blindly investing their cash longer term for minuscule returns. It was advice that many ignored, leaving their portfolios squandering billions.
The president’s forgiveness of student loans aroused plenty of controversy. State and local governments can help craft a more sustainable federal plan that could help to relieve their own workforce shortages and staffing costs.