Fiscal policy, municipal finance, thoughtful budgeting, and infrastructure maintenance. If you ever wanted to know where and why your city's money gets spent, you'll want to hear this. Mark Funkhouser, former mayor of Kansas City, Missouri, with decades of experience in municipal finance, and Liz Farmer, a writer, thinker, and consultant on policy and budgeting, are two of the most knowledgeable people when it comes to local finance. They present us with some really tangible options for getting more out of those in this episode and explore how the systems we have built are fragile, like we've seen in places like Pittsburgh and even in a place like Texas that is ostensibly booming.

There's a lot more. Don't miss it.

Some things to check out after the episode:

Mark’s 2015 Governing article about Infrastructure vs. Pensions: https://www.governing.com/gov-institute/on-leadership/gov-fiscal-issue-that-matters-most-infrastructure-pensions.html

Liz Farmer’s Substack article on 5 things she’s learned after a decade of reporting on municipal bankruptcy:

https://lizfarmer.substack.com/p/5-things-ive-learned-after-a-decade?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=560793&post_id=96315141&isFreemail=false&utm_medium=email

Volcker Alliance Paper: https://www.volckeralliance.org/resources/sustainable-state-and-local-budgeting-and-borrowing-0

BOOKS

Dignity by Chris Arnade

Bonds of Inequality by Justin Jenkins

Still Broke by Rick Wartzmann

Strong Towns by Charles Marohn

Think Again by Adam Grant

Contact Mark or Liz

mark@mayorfunk.com

Website: mayorfunk.com

Twitter: @mayorfunk

liz@majorfunk.com\

Substack: Long Story Short

Twitter: @LizFarmerTweets

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