Indiana Public Finance Director Dan Huge will retire effective Jan. 2, capping off a long career of public service for the state.
Huge, who began his career in public finance at the Indianapolis Airport Authority, didn't plan to stay in the industry, he said. But public finance quickly piqued his interest.
After losing his job as a division controller for Southwestern Bell when the division was sold to a competitor, Huge found himself looking for work. The assistant treasurer job at the airport authority was supposed to be "one of those bridge jobs," Huge said.
Instead, he then found himself in the midst of a challenging transition: the airport had just privatized, and a company named BAA Ltd. was running its operations.
"I was there as the assistant treasurer to monitor all their debts and treasury functions," Huge said. "My other responsibility was oversight of the private company's operations, accounting and financials. So it was an interesting year out at the airport authority."
Rather than moving on to another corporate job, he decided to stay in public finance. The airport authority gig led to a job at the Indianapolis Local Public Improvement Bond Bank. Huge was hired as the bond bank's CFO and soon got drawn into municipal bond deals.
"That's really (when) I had some great mentors, over the four years I was at the bond bank," he said. "For me, the only way to really learn muni finance is to do muni finance; you really can't learn it in a book. It was a great training ground."
From there, he moved to the Indiana Bond Bank, where he spent nearly a decade.
"We did a lot of great things over there," Huge said. "And then I had an opportunity to go to the Capital Improvement Board" of Marion County — which runs downtown Indianapolis facilities, like the Indiana Convention Center, Lucas Oil Stadium, Gainbridge Fieldhouse, Victory Field, Virginia Avenue Parking Garage and Hudnut Commons — "and did a lot of things to right the ship financially: refinanced most of their bonds; built reserves up that need to be built up; put together a better accounting system and back office; and developed much better reporting for the board and outside professionals," he said.
Four years later, he joined the Indiana Finance Authority as CFO. A year after that, in 2015, the IFA's public finance director departed, and the governor asked Huge to step into the role.
"Once I got into all this and found out how challenging it was and how rewarding it was, and your hard work ends up getting other people's attention, it was nice to continue to find new challenges and new opportunities within the state of Indiana," Huge said.
Over the years, there were many memorable deals. Those included funding projects to build better neighborhoods in Indianapolis; financing what was then known as Conseco Fieldhouse for the National Basketball Association's Indiana Pacers; embarking on the state's first public-private partnership to upgrade bridges between Indiana and Kentucky; building a $140 million state-of-the-art mental health hospital in Indianapolis; and completing two major rail projects in the northwest part of the state.
There were highs — the 2012 Super Bowl in Indianapolis, for which Huge says the capital improvement board closed out expenses in record time — and lows, like the time Huge had to lead the state in terminating a contract with a P3 developer who was not delivering for taxpayers as promised.
Along the way, Huge also became a dedicated mentor to up-and-coming public finance professionals. He learned from his own mentors, including Florida Bond Finance Director Ben Watkins, how to "build people up so … when somebody retires, you've got somebody else ready to step into the seat," he said.
Cullen Cochran, now a partner in the public finance group at Bose McKinney & Evans, is one of those mentees. He launched his legal career as a staff attorney at the Indiana Finance Authority in 2014, working with Huge.
"Over the years, I saw first-hand the impact Dan had on the IFA and, by extension, the citizens of the state of Indiana, as Dan was instrumental in leading IFA on a large number of important, often high-profile projects," Cochran said in an email. "I was always impressed with the nearly unanimous, bipartisan respect Dan had amongst all of IFA's stakeholders."
On a personal level, Huge often "went out of his way to promote or highlight my work, any project or matter I was involved in," Cochran said.
"Dan's public service to the state will certainly be missed, but like so many others I am grateful to have worked with him and congratulate him on an incredible career," he added.
Huge's membership in the Government Finance Officers Association was also key. It helped him learn vital skills, network with finance professionals and "be the best public finance director I could be," he said, recognizing Emily Brock for her leadership.
The priorities have shifted from when Huge started out — maintaining the tax-exempt status of muni bonds is now crucial for public finance pros, he said — and so has the landscape.
"The technology that we're dealing with now is so much more advanced than back in 1996," he said. "Now I can watch orders coming in as they come in as opposed to having to fly out to New York and be there on the desk in the late 1990s, early 2000s. … I think it's provided us additional investors, because the breadth of our investors has definitely improved."
Continued disclosure has also changed significantly, according to Huge. "There's a lot higher-level due diligence being done; the market's looking at it to make sure it's being done correctly. The SEC is doing some pretty strong enforcement work on that," he said.
And the players have changed. Huge recently looked up the top underwriting firms in 1996, and found a list that included Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Salomon Brothers, he said. "I would say the firms that are now in the top 10 are really, really good firms, but there's a lot of different names there."
Looking back, Huge said the opportunities to help fellow Hoosiers are what stay with him.
"Everywhere I've been, it's been the same thing — you're making a difference in people's lives at the local government level, but also to those citizens by presenting them the best type of funding opportunities you can to keep costs as low as you can," Huge said. "At the end of day, you always feel like you're doing good."
