Dana Levenson jumped at the chance to be chief financial officer of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation.
“My wife and I came to the conclusion that we wanted to be living in Massachusetts,” said Levenson, 54, a native of Worcester, Mass., and Chicago’s former CFO. “Simultaneously, this opportunity came along, so I see it as an alignment of the stars.”
Levenson, who started his new job on Nov. 29, reports directly to MassDOT Secretary and chief executive officer Richard Davey. The new management team inherits a myriad of challenges, including the $161 million of debt facing the Boston area’s transit system, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. Davey had been the MBTA’s general manager.
“That will be the topic of the day, frankly, and will be even more so for weeks. There is a heightened sense of concern,” said Levenson, a public finance veteran with more than two decades of experience serving public and private clients.
Other troubleshooting will include cost overruns to maintain tunnels constructed as part of the Central Artery/Tunnel Project, known commonly as the Big Dig.
MassDOT, after a restructuring of state agencies in 2009, now oversees most transportation infrastructure components, including those of the dissolved Massachusetts Turnpike Authority.
Most recently, Levenson was managing director and the head of North American infrastructure for Royal Bank of Scotland. He joined RBS in 2007 and advised potential sellers of infrastructure assets and arranged financing for buyers. Previously, Levenson was Chicago’s CFO, with oversight of the city comptroller’s office, the budget and debt management.
Early in his tenure, the city closed on its $1.83 billion 2005 lease of the Chicago Skyway toll road and oversaw the use of proceeds, setting aside $500 million into a reserve that helped the city win a round of credit upgrades. The Windy City later privatized its downtown parking garages in a $563 million deal.
Levenson was also one of the first to sound the alarm on Chicago’s rising unfunded pension obligations, which remain among its most significant fiscal challenges.
Massachusetts itself replenished its rainy-day fund to $1.4 billion this year. That prompted Standard & Poor’s to upgrade the state’s general obligation rating in September to AA-plus from AA, when it sold $500 million in GO bonds.
Moody’s Investors Service rated the GO bonds Aa1, while Fitch Ratings assigned AA-plus.
“The reserves are of major concern to bond rating agencies,” according to Levenson. “Massachusetts has done a nice job building up its reserves. The state is in an upward trajectory.”
Comparing the management of city and state finances, Levenson said, “There are many more similarities than differences, with the focus here more on transportation.”
His background in public-private partnerships raises the specter of such projects in Massachusetts, though Levenson said Davey’s tenure is still in its “very, very early days.” Davey took over Sept. 2
Levenson, previously a managing director for Bank One and Bank of America, received his bachelor’s degree in European history from Brown University and his master’s in business administration from New York University.
