U. of Chicago Muni Finance Center Expands and Hires

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CHICAGO – Boosted by new grant funding, the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy wants to raise its voice on municipal finance research and education.

The school will use a $1.75 million grant from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation to expand its three-year-old Center for Municipal Finance. Michael Belsky, a 30-year veteran of the public finance field and a former suburban mayor, will serve as executive director.

The center intends to hire additional staff and tap the school's faculty and graduate student base to accomplish its expanded training and research goals.

"At the top of most local news programs these days are the issues of pensions and finance," said the center's academic director, Christopher Berry, an associate professor. "But municipal finance is not on the radar screen of business schools, and finance in general is not on the radar screen of most policy schools. It's fallen between the cracks."

The center will work to put together a comprehensive database with city and state financial and pension data and default and privatization information that will allow for in-depth research and direct comparisons among governments. It would be available for use by academics and local government officials and also industry professionals working on financing ideas.

Struggling local and state governments "can't provide services unless their financial house is in order," Belsky said, so the goal is help them by providing practitioners in the field a resource to help solve problems.

"We hope to be a national resource for governmental practitioners, industry participants and academicians seeking to improve the fiscal sustainability of cities and states," Belsky added.

As part of its growth spurt, the center intends to expand the municipal finance certificate it already offers to graduate students. The center offers coursework to about 15 to 20 students annually and has seen many land public finance jobs at investment and financial advisory firms, Belsky said. The program will be extended to allow non-students to participate.

The center will also broaden opportunities for current students who participate in the Harris policy labs initiative in which they team up with municipalities on consulting projects, Belsky says.

The center will also broaden the CFO Forum it established along with the mayor's office and the Governing Institute.

The center holds a semi-annual meeting to gather municipal chief financial officers from the 30 largest cities. It was launched to promote "policy dialogue" and create "a peer-learning network" of CFOs from the largest cities in the United States. The center intends to establish an advisory board of practitioners for advice on forums going forward.

Chicago's former chief financial officer Lois Scott will sit on the advisory panel. Scott was instrumental in establishing the forum and in helping the center win the new grant funding, Belsky said.

Belsky is a lecturer at Harris who has worked on various center initiatives.

His position begins Aug. 1. He will remain a managing director at Greenwich Investment Management.

Belsky left his position as group managing director and head of business development at Fitch Ratings in 2009 to join the Government Accounting Standards Board. Before joining Fitch in 1993, he worked in investment banking at Mesirow Financial Inc. and Northern Trust Co. and served as mayor of the north suburban Chicago city of Highland Park.

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