Liz Farmer is a fiscal policy expert and journalist, writing for a national audience about the many ways state and local governments spend our taxpayer money. Her areas of expertise include budgets, fiscal distress, tax policy and pensions. She is a regular contributor to Forbes and Route Fifty, and has also been published in the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Chicago Tribune, and other top publications. She is also deeply interested in remote work and is a research fellow at the Rockefeller Institute of Government’s Future of Work Research Center. In addition to writing, Liz’s insight and expertise is a valuable asset in her consulting work with Former GOVERNING publisher and Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser at his firm Funkhouser & Associates.
Liz makes regular appearances on radio and podcast programs and has been a guest on NPR's 1A and CSPAN's Washington Journal. She also speaks and moderates at policy conferences.
Liz honed her public policy expertise at GOVERNING magazine, where her writing was the driving force behind the magazine's educational series, Finance 101, which broke down complicated public money issues in ways that everyone can understand and relate to. She also created the punchy and popular weekly newsletter, The Week in Public Finance.
Liz has previously written for the Daily Record in Baltimore, covering the business of sports and other local industry. She was also a staff writer at the Washington Examiner covering District of Columbia local politics, the region’s economic development and its rapidly changing socio-economic structure.
She received her B.A. from the George Washington University in American history, film and television production. After spending a time traveling and working, she completed her Master of Journalism at the University of Maryland in 2007. A proud native of the San Francisco Bay Area, Liz stubbornly remains a Bay Area sports fan. She and her husband now live in Smithsburg, Md. with their son, where they enjoy farming, growing their own produce and hiking the Appalachian Trail.