Public Money Pod

In this week’s episode, we sit down with Jackie Nowicki, Director in the Education, Workforce, and Income Security team at the U.S. Government Accountability Office, to discuss GAO’s new report on school facilities. We discuss the scale of chronic building problems, the role of deferred maintenance and rising construction costs, and why district capacity and community engagement matter as much as funding.

This week, we're joined by Joe Snyder, CFO of Rochester Hills, Michigan, to talk about what happens when citizen engagement moves from less frequent public hearings to a year-round digital portal. We discuss the city's AI budget assistant, hearing from the "silent majority" instead of the vocal few, and how resident feedback shaped the FY2027 budget.

In our second episode of the season, we sit down with Wendy Edelberg to discuss what states can do about affordability, why long-term fiscal notes and sunset provisions deserve more attention, and unpacking the national debt topping $40 trillion and why that headline number isn't the one that matters most for the economy.

In our Season 5 premiere, we sit down with Noah Baskett, CEO, and Tyler Bahr, CFO of the Salt Lake City Public Library, breaking down some misconceptions around how public libraries are funded through property taxes, the expensive cost of digital materials, and the important role philanthropy plays in paying for new branches.

In this special summer break episode, we're live from the GFOA conference in Chicago with Dean Mead, Partner and Government & Public Sector Sub-Line Leader at Carr, Riggs & Ingram (CRI). Drawing on 25 years at the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, Dean walks us through what people most often misunderstand about governmental accounting, who actually reads and uses financial statements, and whether GAAP compliance is too heavy a lift for the tens of thousands of very small governments across the country. We also discuss the real cost of cash-basis reporting and what made some GASB standards so hard to implement.