Well, I’m six months into being self-employed, and it’s quite an adventure! I’m enjoying the freedom, the responsibility, and the sense of crafting another phase to my career. I’ve been fortunate to have several oars in the water at most times, including these:
Utah Valley University
- Strategic planning — helping this fantastic regional, dual-mission university (providing community college services as well as bachelor’s and master’s degrees) with a groundbreaking Academic Master Plan and working to integrate the plan with other plans for facilities and dealing with enrollment growth.
Our Schools Now
- Business leaders and organizations in Utah determined after much study that the state needs significant investment in public education in order to meet the workforce and societal needs of the state. Decades of disinvestment have harmed school finances so deeply that business people are actually pursuing a voter initiative to raise income and sales taxes by $700 million/year to invest in schools.
The Highlands Consulting Group
I have a part-time relationship with Highlands Consulting in Sacramento. They’re great people, and I worked with several of them at Synergy Consulting back around 2000. So far, I’ve been involved in:
- Helping the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) with policy issues around potential road usage charges. This involves figuring out how to tax vehicles by the mile, rather than by the gallon of fuel, an innovative concept that will become more necessary as electric vehicles become more widely used and as continued increases in fuel efficiency erode the connection between fuel taxes and miles traveled (it’s the miles that affect wear and tear on the road, and we’re collecting less revenue to fix the roads as cars become more efficient).
- Helping with regional stakeholder forums for Caltrans to discuss how the increased funding from SB 1 (fuel tax increases) will be used for infrastructure maintenance and investment.
CGR
- I’m connected as a strategic consultant with CGR, a fantastic nonprofit from Rochester, New York. For more than 100 years, CGR has been working with public, nonprofit, and private-sector clients on issues of public interest. They’re looking to take on some West Coast work, and I’ll be working with them on public policy and economic analysis.