When Dan Huge arrived at the Capital Improvement Board of Marion County, its auditors had just issued a going-concern warning. Three and a half years later, Huge had helped rebuild its reserves and refinance nearly all of its debt.
"The view before [I joined], from the financial side, was, 'We just manage the money year-to-year,'" Huge said. "I brought on the view [that] we've got to look further out. We've got to plan further out."
That experience distilled a lesson Huge carried across a career leading major Indiana public finance entities: build financial discipline and look beyond year-to-year money management before taking on complex borrowing and infrastructure challenges. Again and again, Huge was recruited to bring more structure, longer-term planning and financial rigor to public entities — work that will be recognized with his induction into The Bond Buyer Hall of Fame.
For someone whose career became defined by deliberate long-term planning, Huge entered public finance almost by accident.
He had been laid off from a private-sector job and was serving as accountant for an ill-fated presidential campaign while he looked for other work. A member of the campaign, who also worked for the mayor of Indianapolis, asked to see his resume.
"I watched him fill out a fax cover sheet, put it through the fax machine, and then he did it a second time, and I said, 'Hey, um, would you mind telling me what you just did?'" Huge recalled. "He goes, 'Congratulations, you're the new assistant treasurer of the Indianapolis Airport.'"
The unusual start foreshadowed a recurring pattern: public entities saw a need for Huge's financial expertise, sought him out and gave him increasingly difficult problems to solve.
While working at the airport, Huge realized he wanted to stay in public finance. He became chief financial officer of the Indianapolis Local Public Improvement Bond Bank, where he "set up a strong, robust accounting system" and began learning the mechanics of debt issuance.
Huge then moved to the state bond bank, where he worked for a decade.
The bond bank undertook major projects during Huge's tenure, includnng lending money to municipalities when a change to statewide property tax calculations delayed their revenue and issuing pension bonds for almost 200 schools.
"Those were two pretty big feats for an office of three people to take care of," Huge said, "but we were very proud of the work we did."
After the Capital Improvement Board turnaround, the Indiana Finance Authority recruited Huge to become its CFO. As in his prior positions, Huge said he "brought some more structure to their accounting and finance side" while also becoming deeply involved in the authority's municipal bond issuance.
He helped finance improvements for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, two new commuter rail lines and a neuro-diagnostic hospital, and helped refinance debt associated with Lucas Oil Stadium from variable to fixed rate.
At the IFA, Huge's willingness to use complex structures was paired with another skill colleagues said was just as important: translating unfamiliar financings into terms that board members, legislators and other stakeholders could understand and evaluate.
Cris Johnston, Indiana's former
"Kentucky built theirs with a traditional revenue bond financing, and we, the state of Indiana, did more of a [public-private partnership] with availability payments, and that was new to the state of Indiana, sort of a new technique as well," Johnston said. Huge "was the leader in all of that, of bringing that expertise, but then being able to explain it, again, to board members and legislators, why that was a good transaction."
Huge brought the same accessibility to managing people. He had a "friendly, open-door personality," said Jim McGoff, Indiana's public finance director, who worked with Huge at the IFA.
Huge "was always interested in each person he worked with, both professionally and personally," McGoff said. "The time and attention that he devoted to developing young talent is notable."
Huge
He's been spending time with his 10-year-old grandson, he said. He walks dogs for the Humane Society, is more involved with his church and sits on the board of a local credit union. He was also recently named to the Board of Commissioners of the Ports of Indiana.
