Alliance Experts Headline Cost of Government Summit

The Volcker Alliance was well represented at Governing Magazine’s Cost of Government Summit at Washington’s Newseum in September, with President Shelley Metzenbaum offering the opening address and State/Local Program Director Bill Glasgall sitting on a panel that examined the biggest decline in U.S. municipal bond sales in three years.

Metzenbaum discussed the challenges of delivering effective government in an era of fiscal scarcity, 24-hour news media, and political polarization. She challenged those assembled to “focus more explicitly on the outcomes government is trying to influence, returns on current spending and longer-term investments, and the quality of people’s interactions with government.”

Glasgall discussed the implications of the drop in municipal bond issuance with top fiscal officials from the District of Columbia, Cook County, Illinois, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In October, Glasgall also led a panel at the Bond Buyer’s annual California Public Finance Conference featuring Government Accounting Standards Board Chairman David Vaudt, who explained the meaning of his group’s new public pension funding guidelines.