Liz Farmer

Justin Marlowe

General Session
Reimagining Local Public Finance, with the “Public Money Pod

Thursday, April 3 | 11:15 AM – 12:30 PM

This session will feature a live taping of the Public Money Pod – the only podcast devoted to state and local public finance. Hosts Liz Farmer – a renowned journalist focused on state/local public finance – and Justin Marlowe – Director of the Center for Municipal Finance at the University of Chicago – will welcome a group of local government leaders for an engaging conversation about the future of local public finance.  Among other topics, they will explore the future of local taxation; how local governments can respond to shrinking state and federal support; and how public-private partnerships can advance infrastructure investment, economic development and other local goals.

Liz Farmer is a fiscal policy expert and journalist, writing for a national audience about the many ways state and local governments spend our taxpayer money. Her areas of expertise include budgets, fiscal distress, tax policy and pensions. She is a regular contributor to Forbes and Route Fifty, and has also been published in the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Chicago Tribune, and other top publications. She is also deeply interested in remote work and is a research fellow at the Rockefeller Institute of Government’s Future of Work Research Center. In addition to writing, Liz’s insight and expertise is a valuable asset in her consulting work with Former GOVERNING publisher and Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser at his firm Funkhouser & Associates.

Liz makes regular appearances on radio and podcast programs and has been a guest on NPR’s 1A and CSPAN’s Washington Journal. She also speaks and moderates at policy conferences.

Liz has previously written for the Daily Record in Baltimore, covering the business of sports and other local industry. She was also a staff writer at the Washington Examiner covering District of Columbia local politics, the region’s economic development and its rapidly changing socio-economic structure.

She received her B.A. from the George Washington University in American history, film and television production. After spending a time traveling and working, she completed her Master of Journalism at the University of Maryland in 2007. A proud native of the San Francisco Bay Area, Liz stubbornly remains a Bay Area sports fan. She and her husband now live in Smithsburg, Md. with their son, where they enjoy farming, growing their own produce and hiking the Appalachian Trail.

Liz honed her public policy expertise at GOVERNING magazine, where her writing was the driving force behind the magazine’s educational series, Finance 101, which broke down complicated public money issues in ways that everyone can understand and relate to. She also created the punchy and popular weekly newsletter, The Week in Public Finance.

Justin Marlowe is a Research Professor in the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, where he also serves as Director of the Center for Municipal Finance. His research and teaching are focused on public finance, with emphasis on public capital markets, infrastructure finance, state and local budgeting, and financial disclosure. He also serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Municipal Finance Journal, and he co-hosts the Public Money Pod, a podcast produced by the Center for Municipal Finance.

Dr. Marlowe has authored or edited five books – including the forthcoming Public Debt Management: Strategy and Evidence (Cambridge University Press) – and several dozen academic articles and book chapters. He is also an admitted expert witness, and has served on technical advisory bodies for the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, the National Academies of Science, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, among many other public, private, and non-profit organizations. In 2018 he was elected to the National Academy of Public Administration, he is a Senior Fellow at the Government Finance Officers Association, and he contributes a regular column at Government Finance Review.

Dr. Marlowe received a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and is a Certified Government Financial Manager.