The focus of Professor Michael A. Pagano’s work is on the life blood of municipalities, which is their finances, and its relationship to the intergovernmental system. He is Dean of the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs and Interim Dean of the College of Business Administration, Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration (which was chartered by Congress to assist federal, state, and local governments in improving their effectiveness, efficiency, and accountability), co-editor with Susan Clarke of Urban Affairs Review, and Faculty Fellow of UICs Great Cities Institute. He is co-editor of The Dynamics of Federalism in National and Supranational Political Systems with Robert Leonardi (Palgrave 2007), which examines federal systems in the 21st Century, and coauthor with Ann O’M. Bowman of a book published in 2004 by Georgetown University Press titled, Terra Incognita: Vacant Land and Urban Strategies, an examination of the use and re-use of vacant land in the US. He co-authored a book on urban economic development, Cityscapes and Capital (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995) also with Bowman, and a Duke University Press book on urban infrastructure, Cities and Fiscal Choices (1985). He was co-editor of the “Annual Review of American Federalism” issue of Publius: The Journal of Federalism from 1988-95. Since 1991, he has written the annual City Fiscal Conditions report for the National League of Cities and since 2003 he has written a column called The Third Rail for State Tax Notes, which examines contemporary local government fiscal issues. He was Principal Investigator on the Pew Charitable Trusts Government Performance Project to grade the states on Infrastructure Management (2003-08).
Pagano has published over 80 articles on urban finance, capital budgeting, federalism, transportation policy, infrastructure, urban development and fiscal policy; he has delivered over 100 papers and speeches; and he has been awarded grants from from the National Research Council, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Pew Charitable Trusts, Brookings Institution, CEOs for Cities, National League of Cities, Chicago Community Trust, U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, State of Ohio, and elsewhere. He was named the recipient of the Daniel Elazar Distinguished Scholar award in 2011, awarded by the Section on Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations of the American Political Science Association, which recognizes a lifetime of contributions to the study of federalism and intergovernmental relations. He serves on a variety of professional organizations, including the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, the Metropolitan Planning Council (Chicago), the Pension Committee of the Civic Federation, and the Urban Land Institute. He earned a B.A. from the Pennsylvania State University and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 1980.