GWIPP Research Professors
GWPP Research Professors conduct research that is funded through GWIPP. An introduction is presented below.
Dr. Patricia Atkins' study of and involvement with regional governance systems spans her career, beginning in 1969 as an employee with a regional think tank in the Detroit metropolitan area. Her more than three decades experience parallels the growth of regional goverance organizations in the United States . She has cultivated a role as a boundary-crosser, moving between academia where she taught at the University of Baltimore in fields of government, media, politics, and urban affairs; and the practitioner arena, including work at the National Association of Regional Councils and the Prince George's County Budget Office. She has conducted extensive research on regional councils, regional governance networks, urban growth patterns, and various policies for governmental cooperation.
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Dr. Michael Bell is President of MEB Associates, Inc. and Executive Director of the Coalition for Effective Local Democracy. Dr. Bell is also a Research Professor at the George Washington University Institute for Public Policy. Dr. Bell's background is in public finance, with a specific focus on state and local finances and intergovernmental relations. He has recently been involved in projects to strengthen the capacity of local self-government in newly emerging democracies through in-country workshops, internships, study tours, expert missions and research projects. Recent projects in South Africa have focused on strengthening local democratic governance by encouraging greater citizen participation and strengthening local property tax administration. Dr. Bell is a member of the Transportation and Economic Development Committee of the Transportation Research Board and a member of the editorial board of Public Works Management and Policy . Prior to forming MEB Associates, Inc., Dr. Bell was Principal Research Scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Institute for Policy Studies' and taught in the Institute's Masters in Policy Studies Program (MAPS). Dr. Bell has edited five books and published articles in several journals including National Tax Journal, Public Finance, Urban Studies, Journal of Urban Economics, Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, Public Budgeting and Finance, and the Regionalist.
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David Brunori is a journalist, author, educator, and lawyer who specializes in tax and government issues. He is a frequent speaker at conferences around the United States on the subject of state and local tax policy. Brunori is Contributing Editor of State Tax Notes magazine and the author of The Politics of State Taxation, a weekly column focusing on state tax and budget politics. He also writes a regular column on state and local taxes for Governing magazine. Brunori serves as Research Professor of Public Policy at The George Washington University, where he also teaches state and local tax law at the law school. He edited The Future of State Taxation (Urban Institute Press), and has published articles in the National Tax Journal and the State and Local Government Review. His book, State Tax Policy: a Political Perspective , (Urban Institute Press) won the 2001 Choice Award for the best public finance book. His latest work, Local Tax Policy: A Federalist Perspective has recently been published by the Urban Institute Press. Prior to joining State Tax Notes , he served as an appellate trial attorney with the Tax Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and practiced with a Washington DC law firm. He has been a David C. Lincoln Fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy since 2001.
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Dr. Julia Friedman served as Chief Economist for the District of Columbia from December 1992 until her retirement on September 30, 2006. As Chief Economist and Deputy CFO for Revenue Analysis, she built a research program to describe and forecast the economy of the District and to forecast revenue from all tax and non-tax sources. These forecasts are the baseline for the annual budget and long-term financial plan. She also managed the preparation of hundreds of sworn testimonies and fiscal impact analyses of more than a thousand legislative proposals and special studies. As of 1996, these budgetary analyses are binding on all new legislation.
Friedman’s work helped to shape D.C.’s fiscal recovery and emergence from a period of federal control that began in 1995 and lasted for 8 years. Guided by considerations of efficiency, revenue adequacy, equity, and other basic principles, her work deeply influenced the Tax Parity Act of 1999 and the GAO report of March 2003 that finds an annual “structural imbalance” in D.C. of roughly $1 billion. And it affected many economic development policies such as Tax Increment Finance, the Way to Work legislation, the Convention Center, and the Ballpark. She received the Cafritz Award for Excellence in Government Service in 2000, the first year the award was given, and the public service award granted by the GWU chapter of Pi Alpha Alpha, graduate honorary society in Public Affairs, in 2006.
Prior to service in D.C., Dr. Friedman was assistant and associate professor of economics and department chair in the Department of Economics, Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota. While on leave from Macalester she served a Visiting Associate Professor at the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota. In 1990/1991 she was the elected President of the Minnesota Economics Association. She was Visiting Assistance Professor of Economics at the University of Oregon in the 1970s.
Dr. Friedman received a Master’s degree and PhD (1972) in Economics from the University of Oregon, following a BA (1965) in Mathematics from the University of Missouri. She was Vice President and a founding principal of Economic Consultants Northwest from 1974-1984.
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Melissa Keeley is currently on leave. Melissa Keeley’s research focuses on urban environmental policy and planning, particularly water resource management. Her interests include watershed management, land use planning, and the environmental services provided by urban vegetation, and her work contributes a comparative, transatlantic dimension to these topics. With a background in urban ecology, she previously worked as a stream restoration ecologist in Philadelphia, and then at the Berlin Environmental Ministry and the Ecologic Institute of International and EU Environmental Policy. She now regularly consults governmental agencies such as the EPA, and advises decision-makers in cities including Miami, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, and Seattle. She has received numerous awards, including the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, Robert Bosch Foundation Fellowship, and Fulbright Fellowship (declined) . Keeley’s studies have taken her to the universities of Hamburg (in Germany) and Washington (in Seattle), Ohio State and Harvard; she will receive her doctorate in Environmental Engineering from the Technical University of Berlin in spring 2007.
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Richard O. Lempert is the Eric Stein Distinguished University Professor of Law and Sociology and a Research Professor in the George Washington University Institute for Public Policy. From June, 2002 through May, 2006 he was on leave from the University of Michigan to serve as the Division Director for the Social and Economic Sciences at the National Science Foundation. Professor Lempert is a graduate of Oberlin College and the University of Michigan Law School, and he holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan. He has chaired the Sociology Department at the University of Michigan and was the founding director of the University of Michigan’s Life Sciences, Values, and Society Program (LSVSP).
Professor Lempert has received numerous honors for his scholarship. He is a recipient of the Law & Society Association's Harry Kalven Jr. Prize for outstanding socio-legal scholarship, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Secretary of Section K of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His interest in applying social science research to legal issues is reflected in his work on juries, capital punishment, affirmative action, dispute processing and the use of statistical and social science evidence by courts. His innovative book, A Modern Approach to Evidence, now in its third edition, pioneered the problem-oriented approach to teaching evidence law. Lempert is also the author (with Joseph Sanders) of An Invitation to Law and Social Science, and co-editor (with Charles O’Brien and Jaques Normand) of Under the Influence? Drugs and the American Work Force. Recent articles have appeared in the Virginia Law Review, Law and Society Review, Law and Social Inquiry and the Stanford Law Review. In July 2007, he began a two year term as President of the Law & Society Association, and the year before he began a four year term as Secretary of Section K (Social, Economic and Political Sciences) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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Clarence N. Stone is Research Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at the George Washington University . During the academic year 2001-2002, he was a Visiting Fulbright Professor in Denmark . Stone is the author or co-author of three award-winning books, the most recent of which is Building Civic Capacity: The Politics of Reforming Urban Schools. He is a past president of the Urban Politics Section of the American Political Science Association, and was also accorded the section's Distinguished Career Award. Stone has served on a variety of task forces, most recently the Annenberg Institute's Design Group for School Communities That Work. His current research interests include the politics surrounding human-capital policies. Through a recently awarded a Fulbright Alumni grant, Stone is also working with a small team of North Americans and Europeans on developing a curriculum for comparative local politics. The project is a joint effort of the University of Southern Denmark and the George Washington Institute of Public Policy.
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Michael Wiseman is a Research Professor of Public Policy, Public Administration, and Economics at The George Washington University and Visiting Scholar in the Office of Disability and Income Assistance Policy at the Social Security Administration. He is a consultant on program management and evaluation to the Administration for Children and Families in the Department of Health and Human Services and has served as consultant on policy and evaluation for the Department of Work and Pensions in the United Kingdom as well as for various federal and state agencies. Before moving to GWU, he was Professor of Economics at the University of California at Berkeley (18 years), Professor of Public Affairs, Urban and Regional Planning, and Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (10 years) and Senior Fellow at the Urban Institute in Washington (2 years). He is an affiliated scholar with the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His latest book, The Welfare We Want: The British Challenge for American Reform (co-edited with Robert Walker) was published by Policy Press in May 2003.
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