Experts

Kim Rueben, a senior fellow in the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center at the Urban Institute, is an expert on state and local public finance and the economics of education. Her research examines state and local tax policy, fiscal institutions, state and local budgets, issues of education finance, and public-sector labor markets. Rueben directs the State and Local Finance Initiative. Her current projects include work on state budget shortfalls, financing options for California, the fiscal health of cities, and examining higher education tax credits and grants. She serves on a Council of Economic Advisors for the Controller of the State of California and a National Academy of Sciences panel on the economic and fiscal consequences of immigration, and she was on the DC Tax Revision Commission in 2013. In addition to her position at Urban, Rueben is an adjunct fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC).

Before joining Urban, Rueben was a research fellow at the PPIC. She has served as an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Public Policy Institute and the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley; as a visiting scholar at the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank; and as a member of the executive board of the American Education Finance Association.

Rueben received a BS in applied math-economics from Brown University, an MS in economics from the London School of Economics, and a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Tracy Gordon is a senior fellow with the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, where she researches and writes about fiscal challenges facing state and local governments, including budget trade-offs, intergovernmental relations, and long-term sustainability. Before joining Urban, Gordon was a senior economist with the White House Council of Economic Advisers. She was also a fellow at the Brookings Institution, assistant professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, and fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. Gordon was a member of the District of Columbia Infrastructure Task Force and the District of Columbia Tax Revision Commission. She serves on the board of trustees for the American Tax Policy Institute and the National Tax Association.

Gordon has written extensively on state and local government finances, including taxes, budgeting, intergovernmental relations, municipal debt, and pensions. She has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post and on C-SPAN, Fox Business News, and NPR. Recent publications include Assessing Fiscal Capacities of States: A Representative Revenue System–Representative Expenditure System Approach (with Richard Auxier and John Iselin); "The Federal Stimulus Programs and Their Effects" (with Gary Burtless) in The Great Recession; "State and Local Fiscal Institutions in Recession and Recovery" in the Oxford Handbook on State and Local Government Finance; and "Addressing Local Fiscal Disparities" in the Oxford Handbook of Urban Economics and Planning. Gordon holds a PhD in public policy with a concurrent MA in economics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Frank Sammartino is a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center and an affiliate of Urban’s State and Local Finance Initiative. His current work focuses on the interaction among federal, state, and local tax policies and on the influence of tax and transfer policies on income inequality.

Sammartino has written extensively about federal tax and retirement policy issues. In an earlier stint at Urban, he designed and developed the initial version of the Tax Policy Center microsimulation model, which researchers use to analyze how federal tax policies affect federal revenues and families at different income levels. He also led a team of researchers in developing a new version of the Dynamic Simulation of Income Model, which Urban researchers use to analyze how public policies and economic and demographic forces shape retirement income security.

Before returning to Urban, Sammartino completed a 20-year career at the Congressional Budget Office, serving most recently as the assistant director for tax analysis. He also has served as chief economist and deputy director at the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress.

Sammartino holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in economics from Boston College and the University of Wisconsin–Madison, respectively.

Richard C. Auxier is a research associate in the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center at the Urban Institute. His work focuses on state and local tax policy, budgets, and other finance issues. Before joining Urban, Auxier was on the staff of the DC Tax Revision Commission and helped write the commission's final report on recommendations for improving the District's tax system. He also was previously a researcher and editor at the Pew Research Center. Auxier attended the University of Maryland for his undergraduate degree and his master's degree in public policy.