La Follette Notes
Spring 2013 / www.lafollette.wisc.edu
News for Alumni & Friends of The Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin–Madison
Reschovsky
to retire, continue
tax policy research
A
ndrew Reschovsky has spent his career
exploring how tax policies affect individuals and the various ways in which state
and local governments are financed.
Although the government finance expert
is retiring from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, his research schedule remains
full, with further exploration of the fiscal
health of central cities in the United States
and plans for a conference and journal
issue on school finance.
Reschovsky’s work spans several themes,
including city finance, intergovernmental fiscal relations, and tax policy. His recent scholarship has appeared in a number of academic
journals, including the National Tax Journal,
Regional Science and Urban Economics, Public
See Reschovsky on page 6
Reflections on state
of the school
O
ur reception
for alumni and
friends in February
drew 100 guests despite a severe winter storm blowing
through Madison. We
were pleased so many
of you could attend.
I thought I would
From the Director use this space to share
Tom DeLeire
with all our alumni and friends a few
thoughts from my welcoming remarks.
The school’s national reputation is
strong and improving: the latest U.S. News
Ranking placed us 12th in the nation, and
we were third in social policy and ninth in
health policy. We are pleased because we are
one of the smallest schools and certainly are
the smallest of the top ranked schools. We
See Director on page 7
Homecoming welcome for alum
Fifteen La Follette School alumni were among those who celebrated the return of Andy
McGuire, ’09, from a yearlong tour of duty in Afghanistan. McGuire, a program analyst
with the Wisconsin Legislative Audit Bureau, is a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy
Reserve. The alumni are, back row from left: Corey Singletary (’10), Justin Martin
(’08), Joe Fontaine (’08), Tom Hinds (’09), Andy McGuire (’09), Dan Bush (’09), Jacob
Schindler (’10), Tom Robinson (’09), McKinney Austin (’11), Kevin Luecke (’09), Maggie
Carden (’09); front row from left: Liz Drilias (’08), Katie Herrem (’08), Lilly Shields (’10)
and Megan Stritchko (’09). See page 8 for details.
Students win 1st place at policy competition
A
team of five La Follette School students won first place in a national public affairs national competition in
Washington, D.C., March 22-23.
Miriam Palmer, Selina Eadie, Andrew
Walsh, Norma-Jean Simon and Jiaqi Lu won
the Policy Solutions Challenge USA. They
won the Midwest regional competition held
March 1-2 at Ohio State University.
The five presented their strategies for
combating childhood obesity, using policy
and cost-benefit analysis to support their
recommendations, according to their faculty adviser, David Weimer.
“I am very proud of the hard work and
preparation the students put into this exercise,” Weimer says. “Their success says
much about their ability as well as the
talent the La Follette School attracts.”
The contestants say they appreciate
that gifts to the La Follette School from
alumni and friends helped defray the students’ travel expenses. In addition, alumni
Lindsay Read (’09) and Carissa DeCramer
(’08) provided housing for three students,
and 2012 alumni Katherine Sydor, Linda
Collins and Andrew Peppard cheered on
the Fightin’ Bobs at the competition.
The team from the University of Arkansas’ Clinton School of Public Service
took second place, and the team from
Brown University’s Taubman Center for
Public Policy and American Institutions
won third place. w
2 / La Follette Notes
www.lafollette.wisc.edu
Spring 2013
In memoriam
Don Nichols shaped Wisconsin economy, led La Follette School
A
memorial service for professor emeritus
Donald Nichols was held March 16
in Madison. Nichols, whose tenure leading the La Follette School of Public Affairs
helped shape Wisconsin’s economic development, died February 15 at age 72.
A professor emeritus of economics
and public affairs at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Nichols was La Follette
School director from 2002 to 2006.
Nichols served on the staff of the
Council of Economic Advisers to the
U.S. president in 1963 and joined the
UW–Madison faculty in 1966. In 1975
and 1976 he served on the staff of the
U.S. Senate Budget Committee. In the
late 1970s, he was deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor.
Nichols loved economics as a discipline
and economic policy as a practice. While in
Washington, he developed the skill of economic forecasting, something he practiced
in many venues. He had begun his career
as an economic theorist, but he was drawn
to practical problems
of economic policy.
In the 1980s, Nichols was an economic
adviser to Wisconsin
Governor Tony Earl,
and he later served on
Governor Jim Doyle’s
Donald Nichols
Economic Advisory
Council. On campus,
he was director of the Center for Research
on the Wisconsin Economy from 1991
until his retirement in 2006 and director
of the Center for World Affairs and the
Global Economy from 1994 to 2003. He
was a popular teacher and earned several
teaching awards. He published numerous
professional articles and books.
Nichols remained active in his profession after retirement, serving until his death
on the Academic Advisory Board of the
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Starting
in 1987, Nichols was on the original board
of Thompson Plumb Funds, and he served
as chairman after the financial firm was reconfigured. He was widely called upon for
advice and to speak at public functions. He
was a fellow in the Wisconsin Academy of
Sciences, Arts and Letters.
He is survived by his wife of 11 years,
Jane Bartels; by his son, Charles of Madison, Wisconsin; his daughter, Elizabeth,
and his granddaughter, Clare, both of St.
Paul, Minnesota; his brothers, Kenneth and
Paul, both of Middletown, Connecticut;
and his sister, Marcia Stone of Madison,
Connecticut. He was preceded in death by
two wives, each dying of cancer. He was
married to Linda Powley for 20 years and
to Barbara Jakubowski for 17 years.
Nichols was happiest in nature in all
seasons and in contemplating difficult
economic policy problems. Most of all,
he loved to laugh with his wife. w
Family, friends mourn 1995 alum, conservationist Dennis Presser
M
emorial services for 1995 alum
Dennis W. Presser were held February 23 in Madison. Presser, 54, passed away
suddenly from natural causes at his home in
Madison on February 16.
Presser was an environmental analysis
and review specialist with the Bureau of
Land and Water Resources of the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and
Consumer Protection. He earlier worked as
an analyst for the Wisconsin
Department of Transportation
and the State Budget Office.
From 1991-1995, Presser attended and graduated from the
University of Wisconsin–Madison with master’s degrees in public
administration and urban and regional planning. His first job after
graduating was as an extension
agent for Juneau County.
Presser earned a bachelor’s degree in humanities from North
Dakota State University. He served
his country for more than 20 years
as an Army infantryman on active
duty and in the National Guard.
He retired as a captain from the
32nd Infantry Brigade.
Presser was an avid conservationist, hunter and trout fisherDennis Presser, his wife, Laurie Larson, and their dog,
man. He held active roles in many
Django, at Theodore Roosevelt National Park in 2011.
organizations, including the Ruffed Grouse
Society, Dane County
Conservation League,
the Nature Conservancy, Southwest Wisconsin Chapter of Trout
Unlimited, the Prairie
Enthusiasts. He served
as chairman of the Pre- Dennis W. Presser
scribed Fire Council of
Wisconsin.
Presser also was a union steward for the
Wisconsin Science Professionals. He was
an active member of his church, Circle
Sanctuary of Mount Horeb, and he led
conservation efforts on the nature preserve
there. He enjoyed making music and was
a member of the Madison-based Brazilian
percussion group “The Handphibians” for
several years.
Survivors include his wife of 25 years,
Laurie Larson, and their two children,
Hunter and Allegra Larson, all of Madison.
He was beloved by many for his humor
and full-hearted generosity. To his last day,
he lived his life fully. w
Spring 2013
www.lafollette.wisc.edu
News from alumni and friends
1970s
Terry Lierman, 1971, has started a venture
capital and consulting company, Summit Global
Ventures, after stepping down in late 2011 as chief
of staff for U.S. House Majority Leader Steny H.
Hoyer of Maryland. He also is one of the founders
of Global Virus Network, a non-profit organization that brings together medical virologists from
more than 31 countries to track pandemic viruses,
educate the public and train virology researchers.
He will give the keynote address at this year’s commencement of his undergraduate school Winona
State University in Minnesota 1980s
Kevin R. Hayden, 1984, is now chief execu-
tive officer of Group Health Cooperative of South
Central Wisconsin. Prior to starting that position
in 2013, Hayden served as president of WellPoint
State Sponsored Business,
where he had national
responsibility for the company’s Medicaid managedcare business in 10 states.
Hayden earlier was chief
administrative officer at
Dean Health System, and
he served as secretary of
the Wisconsin Department of Health and Family
Kevin Hayden
Services in 2006-08.
1990s
Brad Kelly, 1993, is now the committee administrator for the Senate Education Committee in the
Minnesota Senate.
Bill Cosh, 1993, is communications director of
the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
Cosh had been the department’s spokesperson.
Prior to joining the DNR, he served as the spokesperson for the state Department of Justice and
attorney general J.B. Van Hollen. He previously
served as a research assistant for state representative Dan Meyer and as
the senior education policy
advisor under governor
Scott McCallum. Cosh
began his career as an
assistant in the office of the
chancellor at the University
of Wisconsin–Madison
while he was a graduate
student at the La Follette
Institute.
Bill Cosh
Mary Carr Lee, 1995, is
marketing communications
manager of Group Health
Cooperative of South
Central Wisconsin. Earlier,
she supervised all external
affairs programming at the
Chazen Museum of Art at
the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Prior to that,
Mary Carr Lee she spent a decade in
broadcast journalism, then
held public relations positions at UW Hospital and
Clinics and Meriter Health Services. In addition to
her master’s degree in public policy and administration, she has a certificate in health management.
2000s
Isaac Eagan, 2011, is helping the nonprofit
organization Spirit of America respond to needs
identified by American military and civilian personnel serving around the world for items, support and
expertise that will help local people.
Joe Davison, 2009, has been promoted to
major with the Wisconsin National Guard. In May
he becomes deputy commander of the 54th Civil
Support Team, Wisconsin’s full-time response team
for emergencies or terrorist events that involve
weapons of mass destruction or toxic industrial
chemicals. Share
your
news
LARGE
and
small
Send your news or
update your records any time by
emailing alumni@lafollette.wisc.edu
or calling 608-263-7657
La Follette Notes / 3
Future Bobs
2002 alum Hilary (Murrish) Benedict
and her husband, Ian, welcomed their
first child in January. “Our son, Dillon
Reese Benedict, was born on January
16 at 7 pounds 11 ounces, 20.5
inches,” she reports. “We are all doing
well and adjusting to life with our little
one.” Benedict is a senior analyst with
the Government Accountability Office in
Denver, Colorado.
w
2009 grads Emily Engel and Jennifer
Hassemer announce the birth of their
daughter, Willa Susan Hassemer. She
was born October 29 and weighed 10
pounds. Hassemer is a public finance
attorney at the Dorsey & Whitney law
firm in Minneapolis, and Engel is a
health and human services executive
budget officer with the Minnesota Management and Budget department.
4 / La Follette Notes
www.lafollette.wisc.edu
Spring 2013
Health-care reform expands patient advocacy, alum finds
H
ealth-care reform makes “free and
vigorous” advocacy around private
insurance issues available to more Americans, according to a study coauthored by
2002 alum Sarah Davis, associate director
of the Center for Patient Partnerships at
the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
The reform creates a national commitment to such assistance for the very first
time, and it provides grants and technical
support for state-run consumer assistance
programs, Davis and her coauthors note.
After interviewing senior consumer assistance program staff around the United
States and analyzing grant documents,
Davis and coauthors found that advo-
cacy capacity had substantially increased
in roughly half the states receiving federal
grants, and some progress had been made
virtually everywhere.
Their findings are detailed in “The
Affordable Care Act’s Plan For Consumer
Assistance with Insurance Moves States
Forward but Remains a Work in Progress”
published in February in the journal Health
Affairs. The article is part of a special issue
on patient engagement.
Consumer advocacy programs can be
underutilized because many consumers are
unaware of the resource, Davis says. Most
states have consumer assistance programs
with staff who can answer questions about
coverage, access and
co-pays.
Davis has a dualdegree in law and
public policy. She
teaches about health
advocacy and health
law. The Center for
Patient Partnerships,
an interdisciplinary
Sarah Davis
center of the schools
of Law, Medicine and
Public Health, Nursing and Pharmacy, offers experiential patient advocacy education to students from those disciplines and
others. w
Recent alum reviews food policy in medical journal
2
012 alum Carly
Hood is lead author on an article in
the Wisconsin Medical
Journal.
Hood wrote “Promoting Healthy Food
Consumption: A Review of State-Level
Policies to Improve
Carly Hood
Access to Fruits and
Vegetables” with Ana
Martinez-Donate and Amy Meinen.
They review state-level policy op-
tions recently proposed or implemented
across the United States. They provide an
evidence-based lens through which food
access policy can be shaped in the Midwest.
The review and potential framework
uses Wisconsin to illustrate the feasibility
of different state-level decisions and their
potential impact on particu­lar populations.
Future supply-side policies to consider include expanding Electronic Benefit Transfer to the Special Supplemental Nutrition
Program for Women, Infants and Children
program and farmers markets, incentivizing the purchase of locally grown produce,
assisting local specialty farmers directly,
and/or establishing a state-level food policy
council. The review reveals that a food
policy council would create a more sustainable policy analysis process to better ensure
comprehensive policy that encompasses
production, distribution and purchase of
locally grown fruits and vegetables.
Hood earned master’s degrees in public
affairs and public health through the La
Follette School’s dual-degree program. She
is a post master’s fellow with the Population Health Institute at the University of
Wisconsin–Madison. w
Students share costs, benefits of consolidated fire departments, EMS
S
tudents recommended that four municipalities just
south of Madison consolidate their fire departments
and emergency medical services.
The students conducted the cost-benefit analysis after
Fitchburg mayor Shawn Pfaff, a 2002 La Follette alum,
asked his city manager to contact the La Follette School
for assistance. The students only considered consolidation as an alternative to the current service arrangement.
All members of professor David Weimer’s cost-benefit analysis class, the students presented in December to
about 75 firefighters, chiefs, paramedics, administrators
and other officials for Fitchburg, the town of Madison,
village of Oregon and the city of Verona.
“With municipal budgets getting tighter and the demand for services getting greater, it is important for local
governments to find ways to collaborate to lower costs
and improve services,” Pfaff says. “That is why we needed La Follette students to provide us with an analytical
road map through a detailed cost-benefit analysis.” w
From left: Fitchburg mayor and 2002 La Follette School alum Shawn Pfaff, and
students Jimmy Galindo, Angela Waltz, Andrew Kleps, Phil Sletten, Katie
Biddick and Bryan Mette who carried out the cost-benefit analysis.
Spring 2013
www.lafollette.wisc.edu
La Follette Notes / 5
Research news
Moynihan urges full FEMA funding, wins award for paper
T
he United States must not scale back
its Federal Emergency Management
Agency, professor Donald Moynihan argues in the journal Nature.
A central agency is crucial for disaster
response, Moynihan says. “Even as the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy demonstrates the
importance of federal assistance, the government is cutting the budget of the Federal
Emergency Management Agency’s New
York office by 5 percent,” Moynihan says.
“That cut to FEMA is a false economy. If
we do not prepare for the growing threats
that FEMA deals with, we will pay more
when disaster strikes.”
A
paper Moynihan coauthored won
the 2013 Joseph Wholey Scholarship
Performance Award from the American
Society for Public Administration for
outstanding scholarship on performance
in public and nonprofit organizations.
Moynihan wrote the paper with Stéphane Lavertu, an assistant professor at
Ohio State University.
The authors published “Does Involvement in Performance Reforms Encourage
Performance Information Use? Evaluating
GPRA and PART” in 2012 in Public
Administration Review.
Moynihan and
Lavertu found that
attempts to improve
the performance of
federal programs
haven’t been as effective as they could be.
They found performance management
Donald
reforms in 1993 and
Moynihan
2002 did not affect
federal managers’
administrative decisions or their allocation
of money, although the changes did result
in managers refining program goals. w
Chinn’s analysis debunks exchange rate policy tenet
T
he argument that more flexibility in
the exchange rate regime speeds up
current account adjustment is not true,
recent analysis by economist Menzie Chinn
suggests.
Chinn and coauthor Shang-Jin Wei of
Columbia University report their findings
in an article to be published by the Review
of Economics and Statistics.
The exchange rate regime is how a
country manages its currency’s value in
relation to other currencies. A country’s
current account is the difference between
the values of imports and exports, plus net
income from abroad.
Based on 1971-2005 data for more than
170 countries, Chinn and Wei examine
whether the rate of current account reversion depends upon the de facto degree of
exchange rate fixity.
“We find that there is
no strong, robust or
monotonic relationship between exchange
rate regime flexibility
and the rate of current account reversion,
even after accounting
for the degree of ecoMenzie Chinn
nomic development,
the degree of trade and
capital account openness,” says Chinn who
has been named co-editor of the Journal of
International Money and Finance.
The findings are significant because
poli­cymakers and economic analysts
around the world generally assume that if a
country’s exchange rate is flexible, then cur-
rent account imbalances will typically be
corrected fairly quickly, Chinn says. A current account deficit occurs when the value
of a country’s imports is greater than the
combined value of exports and net income
from abroad. The current-account deficit
is a broader measure than a country’s trade
deficit because, in addition to imports and
exports, it includes income from assets
abroad after payments for liabilities owed
to foreigners are subtracted out.
“For example,” Chinn says, “Egypt and
China have a relatively rigid exchange rate
regimes, meaning they do not adjust the
value of their currencies. Yet, Egypt has a
relatively fast current account convergence,
meaning it rarely has a large and persistent
deficit or surplus, but China does not.” w
Professors back gun violence study
Efforts to mitigate climate change
must target energy efficiency
S
P
chool director Tom DeLeire and professor Barbara Wolfe encouraged
President Obama to end the ban on research on the public health effects of gun violence.
They were two of more than 100 scholars who wrote to the president’s
gun violence commission urging more research. “It could be the case that
many of the claims or some of the claims made by proponents of gun control are overstated,” DeLeire told Wisconsin Public Radio.
DeLeire sees parallels between gun research and studies of motor vehicles that led to safer cars and drivers. “Better research—if one were to
believe those things were overstated—better research would show that,”
he says. w
ublic institutions and private investors devote
twice as much effort to developing energy supply
technologies—such as new power stations—than on
improving the efficiency with which energy is used, a
report coauthored by professor Greg Nemet shows.
Published in Nature Climate Change in 2012, the
research shows that efficient end-use technologies
have the potential to contribute large emission reductions and provide higher social returns on investment
—so the imbalance in current innovation efforts
must be redressed to mitigate climate change. w
6 / La Follette Notes
Two faculty win
campus honors
La Follette faculty members
Menzie Chinn and Susan
Yackee have been honored
with campus awards.
“These are all well-deserved
honors,” says La Follette
School director Tom DeLeire.
“These awards recognize the
high caliber of research that
La Follette School faculty
carry out, as well as their
contributions to improving the
design, implementation and
evaluation of public policy
and the practice of governance worldwide.”
Chinn won the Kellett MidCareer Award, which recognizes outstanding mid-career
faculty members who are five
to 20 years past the first promotion to a tenured position.
He is one of 12 professors
to each receive a $60,000
flexible research award.
Yackee is one of 11 professors on campus to receive
a Romnes fellowship. This
award
recognizes
exceptional
faculty
members
who have
earned tenure within
the last six Susan Yackee
years. Selected by a Graduate School
committee, winners receive
an unrestricted $50,000
award for research. The
award is named for the late
H.I. Romnes, former chairman of the board of AT&T
and former president of the
WARF board of trustees.
www.lafollette.wisc.edu
Reschovsky continued from page 1
Finance Review, Education Finance & Policy, Public
Budgeting and Finance, Comparative Education
Review, and Public Finance and Management.
Reschovsky’s significant contributions to state
and local government finance were recognized in
2011 with the Steven D. Gold Award, given by the
Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, the National Conference of State Legislatures and the National Tax Association.
Reschovsky will continue to research city
finance as he and coauthors expand their analysis of the fiscal health of U.S. cities. Reschovsky,
Howard Chernick of Hunter College and Adam
Langley of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy
have constructed what they call “fiscally standardized cities.” This calculation, which was described
in the fall 2012 La Follette Policy Report, allows the
authors to account for all local government revenues received by local governments that provide
services to city residents and businesses.
“The basic idea is to include all revenues collected by a central city municipal government and
by that portion of independent school districts,
special districts and county governments that overlay municipal boundaries,” Reschovsky says. “We
refer to the result of this calculation as the revenue
of a ‘fiscally standardized city government.’”
Reschovsky and his coauthors have data for
109 U.S. cities from 1977 to 2010, and they are
adding data from subsequent years as the information becomes available.
“One of our goals is to use these data to determine the fiscal health of central cities,” Reschovsky
says. “More importantly, we want to know why
some cities are in particularly weak fiscal health,
and which policies and governance structures lead
to improved fiscal conditions. We want to identify
both good and bad practices.”
Reschovsky first became interested in local
financeand intergovernmental relations while a
doctoral student in economics at the University of
Pennsylvania. For his dissertation on intra-metropolitan residential location and the local public sector, Reschovsky studied the role of local taxes and
public spending on households’ residential choices
within Minnesota’s Twin Cities metropolitan area.
E
xploring the distributional impacts of various
public policies is another theme of Reschovsky’s research. He has strived to understand how
policies affect different individuals and how best
to measure these effects. He looked at the effects
of Proposition 13, California’s 1978 constitutional
amendment to limit property taxes; taxation of
poor people; and taxation of Social Security benefits. He also examined the distribution of tax burdens from gasoline taxes.
Spring 2013
“These issues keep coming back,” Reschovsky
says, noting that one of his spring 2013 Workshop
in Public Affairs groups is investigating Wisconsin’s policy relating to the taxation of retirement
income. “Policy analysts should keep in mind they
never write the definitive answers to these issues.”
Formula design—how
state and federal policymakers
distribute aid to governmental units—is a third element
of Reschovsky’s research. His
second teaching job took him
from Rutgers University to
Tufts University in Massachusetts. His early years there
included incumbent governor
Andrew
Michael Dukakis’ 1979 loss
Reschovsky
and 1983 re-election.
“Dukakis ran on a platform that included a
promise that the state government would provide
more state aid to local governments in the wake
of the state having passed property tax limits,”
Reschovsky says. “The question was how to allocate the aid. Few scholars were working on state
and local public financing, so with three other
economists, I helped develop a funding formula
that became the basis of how aid was distributed
in Massachusetts. We took into account not only
property values, but the fact that some municipalities operated in more expensive environments—
higher population density, concentrations of lower
income families—which raises the costs of providing public services, such as public safety and education. Some local governments need to spend more
money to provide any given level of public service,
and the factors in the distribution formula should
account for these higher costs.”
R
eschovsky expanded on that experience and
participated in designing state aid distribution formulas in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Texas and
South Africa. “South Africa was decentralizing as it
moved away from being a highly centralized state
during the apartheid era,” Reschovsky says. “The
nation had to figure out how to allocate central
government resources to its newly democratized
provincial and local governments. I was delighted to
play a small part in helping them achieve that goal.”
Reschovsky was a consultant to the national
government’s Department of Provincial and Local
Government, and he has served as a technical advisor to the South African government’s Financial
and Fiscal Commission since 1999.
In Wisconsin, one recent analysis provided
strong statistical evidence that few elderly homeowners are forced to move from their homes because of rising property taxes. Another study found
See Reschovsky on page 7
Spring 2013
www.lafollette.wisc.edu
Reschovsky helps students sharpen analysis skills
Andrew Reschovsky has trained many La Follette School alumni in the intricacies of state and
local government finance, government finance in
developing countries and microeconomic policy
analysis.
Most recently, the course in state and local public
finance has been his favorite to teach. “Recent
events in Wisconsin and in other state capitals,
coupled with funding cutbacks at the federal
level, have led students to the realization that the
action is now at the state and local level,” says
Reschovsky.
As an instructor for the workshop in public affairs, Reschovsky has guided teams of domestic
and international public affairs students as they
conducted research and policy analysis for realworld clients that include the city of Milwaukee;
the Wisconsin Legislative Council; the Wisconsin
Reschovsky continued from page 6
that an increase from two to three property
tax installment payments each year would
reduce the property tax delinquency rate by
about a third. Other analyses have focused
on aspects of school funding in Wisconsin.
I
n a 2004 paper discussed at the La Follette
School’s January 2005 conference Taxing
and Spending Limits in Wisconsin, Reschovsky demonstrated that a proposed amendment to Wisconsin’s constitution to limit
government spending and taxing authority
would lead to reductions in programs that
help the state’s most vulnerable residents, a
downsizing of the University of Wisconsin
System and reductions in school districts’
ability to provide quality education.
Reschovsky also was one of the first
analysts to anticipate and project Wisconsin’s “structural deficit,” which Reschovsky
defines as occurring when the amount of
money needed to maintain current public
services exceeds the revenue generated by
the state’s existing tax system. In a 2002 La
Follette School primer, Reschovsky noted
the state has had a structural deficit since at
least the mid-1990s, and he predicted the
state would continue to see annual structural deficits through fiscal year 2009–10. The
“structural deficit” was much discussed in
departments of Revenue and Health Services;
and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development in Paris.
“The public affairs workshop lets graduate students at La Follette improve their policy analysis
skills while they contribute to the capacity of
the collaborating agency to provide services,”
Reschovsky says.
“The best way to learn policy analysis is to do
policy analysis,” he adds. “Analysis is central to
our discourse about public policies, especially in
public finance, a highly contested area as people
debate taxes and the appropriate role of government in our economy. Our students graduate
with a strong portfolio of analytic skills and a
deep appreciation of the importance of careful
analysis in the functioning of governments at all
levels.”
Wisconsin during the 2010 governor’s race.
Upon retiring in June after 24 years
with the University of Wisconsin–Madison,
Reschovsky and his wife, Julia K. Murray,
a professor of Chinese art history at UWMadison, will move to the Boston area,
where he plans to continue his research on
state and local public finance and on the
fiscal health of U.S. cities.
With the support of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he has been a visiting fellow
since 2007, Reschovsky is organizing a conference to examine the role of school property taxes. “The Property Tax and Financing
of K-12 Education” will be held October
18-19 in Cambridge.
Papers presented at the conference and
other submissions will be considered for
inclusion in a special issue of the journal
Education Finance and Policy that Reschovsky is co-editing.
The primary objective of the conference
and the special issue is to encourage research
on the role that the property tax or alternative local government revenue sources play
in funding public education, Reschovsky
says. “A major focus will be the fiscal behavior of local school districts in an environment of declining or, at best, stable state
and federal intergovernmental revenues.” w
La Follette Notes / 7
Director continued from page 1
like our size because it allows us to develop
close ties with our students in ways that
would not be possible with giant cohorts.
One reason for our reputation is the
strength of our faculty. As noted elsewhere
in this issue, two faculty members won
prestigious university awards last fall: Susan Yackee and Menzie Chinn. This adds
to the awards received in recent years by
David Weimer, Don Moynihan, Melanie
Manion and others. In this regard, we are
one of the most highly decorated units on
campus, despite our small size, and we are
quite proud of that status.
In other areas our job placements are excellent and improving. Despite a challenging
economy and tight budgets, La Follette students are in high demand, no doubt because
of their great inherent talents as well as the
training they receive—and valuable advice
from many of our alumni and friends.
The number of applications to our program continues to grow year after year.
Another reason for our positive reputation is the backing by our alumni. I thank
our many alumni and friends for their support of the La Follette School. You can and
do help us in many ways: by hosting students as interns, by hiring our graduates,
and by mentoring students or recent graduates. These are all terrific ways in which
you directly help our students, the school,
and the university—thank you.
Another important way in which you
can help the La Follette School is through
alumni giving. In any given year, we receive support from almost 5 percent of our
alumni, meaning 95 percent of our alumni
don’t support the school financially. I encourage you to make a gift and to encourage your classmates to do so. Donations
from alumni and friends are used to directly support current La Follette students
through scholarships and through student
programming. Schools of public affairs
rely on their alumni to “give back” in order
to continue their missions of training leaders in public and non-profit sectors.
I hope you will join your classmates in
strengthening the La Follette School and its
support for students and programs. w
Support La Follette School students and programs
Information available online at www.lafollette.wisc.edu/giving
or call 608-263-7657 or email giving@lafollette.wisc.edu
Non-Profit Org.
U.S. Postage
Paid
Madison WI
Permit No. 658
1225 Observatory Drive
Madison WI 53706
8 / La Follette Notes
Save the dates
If you will be in Madison,
please join us
Thursday, July 11, 2013, for
w
the Hill Fest evening picnic on
the La Follette School grounds,
5-7 p.m.
wThursday, February 6, 2014,
for the annual reception at Inn
on the Park, 4:30-7 p.m.
La Follette Notes (vol. 16, no. 2) is printed twice a
year for La Follette School alumni and friends. Online
news is published continuously.
Information:
alumni@lafollette.wisc.edu / 608-263-7657
© 2013 Board of Regents of the University of
Wisconsin System. The University of WisconsinMadison is an equal opportunity and affirmativeaction educator and employer. We promote
excellence through diversity in all programs.
www.lafollette.wisc.edu
Spring 2013
Friends welcome alum home from Afghanistan
M
ore than 70
friends, family, and colleagues, including 15 La Follette
School alumni, gathered
to celebrate the return
of Andy McGuire, ’09,
from a yearlong tour of
duty in Afghanistan.
McGuire, a program
analyst with the Wisconsin Legislative Audit
Bureau, is a lieutenant
commander in the U.S.
Navy Reserve. He was
called up to serve with a
joint intelligence unit at
Bagram Air Base.
Laura and Andy McGuire at the welcome home party in Madison.
The party, held in
March in Madison, was See page 1 for photo of alumni at party.
thrown by The OMG Club, a group of “old
the Audit Bureau and rejoining his Chicamarried guys” who became friends while
go-based reserve unit, but not before enjoystudying at La Follette.
ing a spring break trip to Hawaii with his
McGuire is returning to his position at
wife, Laura. w