Marion Gee of the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District is expected to be elected Tuesday morning as president-elect of the Government Finance Officers Association as Terry Stone of Hanover County Public Schools in Virginia becomes president.
The election will be held at GFOA’s annual meeting at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
Steven Gibson of Rocky Hill, S.C. is stepping down as GFOA president at the end of his one-year term.
Gee, 51, is director of finance for the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District and responsible for accounting, financial planning, rate modeling, accounts receivable and purchasing for the district.
“Our capital program is very large,” Gee said. “We are projecting that we will spend about $1.6 billion over four years. So having access to capital markets, particularly the issuance of municipal bonds, is very important to us. That is something I definitely will be paying attention to.”
His water district is planning a bond issue of $150 million to $175 million in December to continue to finance its capital program.
“Most of my career has been spent working with water and sewer utilities but I was also an assistant finance director with the city of San Antonio,” he said. “I worked with utilities there. We did some hotel tax audits and some other contractual audits as well.”
Gee has been in St. Louis since 2015, coming there after a five year tenure in San Antonio.
Earlier in his career he served as finance director for the Louisville, Kentucky Metropolitan Sewer District and corporate controller for the Louisville Water Company.
A native of western Kentucky, Gee is a certified public accountant with MBA and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Louisville. He and his wife Marian have a 17-year-old daughter.
Gee supports GFOA’s programs that focus on mentoring and starting student chapters as well as keeping a handle of what is going on legislatively at the federal level as well as on the regulatory front on disclosure.
“One of the things we are really focusing on is employee retention and employee recruitment,” he said. “We want to get the word out that a career as a government finance professional is very worthwhile, very noble. We want to expound on the opportunities for young people.”
Stone, 53, is assistant superintendent for business and operations with Hanover County Public Schools in the northern suburbs of Richmond, Virginia.
GFOA had a previous president from the higher education sector, but Stone is the first from the K through 12 sphere.
Only about 8.5% of GFOA’s individual members and 9% of its organizational members are from school districts.
One of Stone’s goals as GFOA president for 2019-2020 will be to increase membership among the nation’s school districts. Along with that, she wants to increase membership in GFOA’s Alliance for Excellence in School Budgeting, which currently has only about 100 members.
Stone has a bachelor’s degree in accounting for Virginia Commonwealth University and is a certified public accountant.
She worked for 20 years for Hanover County government before switching over the schools.
She’s also worked for other school districts, serving as chief financial officer for Williamsburg-James City County Public Schools and as assistant superintendent of finance and administration for the neighboring Henrico County Public Schools.
GFOA is governed by an 18-member executive board, which consists of 15 at-large members, the current president, the past president, and the president-elect.
On Tuesday GFOA members also will elect five new members-at-large.
The candidates selected by the GFOA nominating committee are Laura Allen, town administrator of Berlin, Maryland; Chris Daniel, chief investment officer of Albuquerque, New Mexico; Dan Huge, public finance director of the Indiana Finance Authority based in Indianapolis; William Jones, city administrator of Mequon, Wisc.; and Matthew M. Lentz, business manager for the Upper Moreland School District in Willow Grove, Pa.
