Roland Calia, Ph.D. — Project Manager
Roland Calia is a public finance consultant who manages special research projects for the Civic Federation. His work with the Federation focuses on local government budgets and finance and the funding of cultural institutions. Dr. Calia holds an adjunct faculty position in public administration at the Illinois Institute of Technology.
Formerly, Dr. Calia was a Senior Manager for Budgeting and Financial Planning in the Research and Consulting Center of the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA). At GFOA, he directed consulting projects that provided an organizational review of the District of Columbia’s Office of Budget and Planning and a debt capacity analysis for Washington County, Maryland. He authored a monograph on Priority Setting Models for Public Budgeting, several Government Finance Review articles on performance measurement, long-term financial planning and priority setting; and a forthcoming monograph on Long-Term Financial Planning. Dr. Calia also managed GFOA’s national training programs on budgeting and taught seminars on best practices in budgeting and performance measurement and staffed GFOA’s Committee on Budgeting and Management, which develops recommended practices on state and local budgeting.
Prior to his work at GFOA, Dr. Calia was Director of Research for The Civic Federation. In that position, he authored monographs on the financial condition of local governments in northeastern Illinois, the Cook County property classification system, tax increment financing, Cook County property taxes, assessment and appeals, Containing Costs in Cook County, and reforming the Chicago Public Schools budget process. He also prepared testimony on local government budgets and staffed the Federation’s Tax and Research Committee as well as Task Forces on the Cook County Assessment Appeals Process and Tax Increment Finance. While a Civic Federation staff member, he served as a member of the Governmental Accounting Standards Advisory Council (GASAC), a body that advises the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) on national governmental financial reporting standards.
Roland Calia holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago, a Master’s Degree in Government from Claremont Graduate School and a B.A. in Political Science and History from the University of Redlands.