During the recent Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) Annual Conference in Washington D.C. from June 29 through July 2, we had the opportunity to videotape eight attendees speaking forthrightly about their areas of expertise, and we’ve been posting them weekly. The first installment featured Lunda Asmani, Chief Financial Officer for Norwalk Public Schools in Connecticut and the new president of the GFOA. The second was with Liz Farmer, officer at the Pew Charitable Trusts. The third was with Tanya Garost, City Manager of Martensville, Saskatchewan, and recent past president of GFOA..

This week we visit with Justin Marlowe, a research professor in the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, where he also serves as Director for the Center for Municipal Finance. Marlowe focused his comments on the research the Center has done, along with GFOA members and others, regarding the possibility that the federal government will alter the federal tax exemption for municipal bonds.

“That’s . . . something that makes those bonds attractive to investors across the country,” he says. “For that reason, the bond market is a very important part of state and local public finance. There’s roughly $4.5 trillion dollars’ worth of bonds outstanding (to finance) everything from school buildings to roads to sewers to convention center and everything in between.”

The work in which he’s participated “was to really bring that to life by understanding where and how municipal bonds have been issued at the granular level and then roll that up to the congressional district level and be able to say with very specific kinds of numbers: This many billions of dollars worth of school buildings have been built in each of the 435 congressional districts; this many billions of dollars worth of new water treatment facilities.”

That data had a payoff in increasing congressional understanding. “We found those numbers . . . were really helpful. It helped members of Congress, in particular, to really understand exactly what this meant in their district.”