Experts

Kim Rueben is the Sol Price fellow and director of the State and Local Finance Initiative at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. Rueben is an expert on state and local public finance and the economics of education. Her work examines issues of state and local public finance and focuses on state budget and tax issues, intergovernmental relations, fiscal institutions, and the economics of education, including federal and state financing of both K–12 and postsecondary education and how decisions affect different individuals across states.

In addition to her position at the Urban Institute, Rueben is an adjunct fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), serves on the board of the National Tax Association, the Washington, DC, Revenue Estimation Advisory Group, and as an advisor to Let’s Get Set, a purpose-driven fintech start-up. She works closely with state officials and has served on state tax advisory boards including in California and Washington, DC, and has testified before congressional and state legislative committees. She was a member of the National Academy of Sciences Panel that examined The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration and was on the executive board of the American Education Finance Association.

Before joining Urban, Rueben was a research fellow at the PPIC.

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 California Budget and Policy Center.

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 senior policy associate in the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. 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.

Lucy Dadayan is a senior research associate with the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center at the Urban Institute, where she is leading the State Tax and Economic Review project.

Before joining Urban, Dadayan was a senior research scientist with the Rockefeller Institute of Government, where she wrote extensively on state and local government fiscal issues, including state government tax revenue trends, personal income taxes, tax revenue forecasts, property taxes, gambling tax revenue, government employment, spending on social services, education spending, and state spending on children’s programs. She has authored or coauthored four chapters for the Book of the States (2015, 2016, and 2017 editions). Dadayan’s work is frequently cited in major news media, including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Bond Buyer, Bloomberg, the Washington Post, Forbes, the Boston Globe, the Financial Times, and the Los Angeles Times. Dadayan is often invited to present at conferences and provide testimonies for state government agencies.

Dadayan has been a reviewer for the peer-reviewed journals Public Budgeting and Finance, State and Local Government Review, and the Journal of Public Administration and Policy Research. In addition, she is a reviewer for the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, one of the longest-standing continuously running scientific conferences.

Dadayan holds an MA in public policy and affairs and a PhD in informatics, both from the State University of New York at Albany.