Brookings Mountain West presents "Putting Nevada in Perspective: State and Local Government Budgets in Recession and Recovery." A talk by Tracy Gordon, fellow, Economic Studies.

Nevada, the state most affected by the Great Recession of 2008, faced one of the nation’s worst state budget shortfalls in 2011. This presentation examines state budget drivers, including constitutional requirements, tax and spending limitations, federal statutes, demographics, and the resulting policy choices to evaluate how state-level decisions affect local jurisdictions that continue to cope with lower property values, foreclosures, and high unemployment. It will also discuss longer term challenges including rising health care costs and retiree pensions as well as issues surrounding implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

Tracy Gordon is a Fellow in Economic Studies. She is also an affiliated scholar with the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center. Her research is in state and local budgeting and public finance, political economy, and urban economics. Before joining Brookings, Gordon was an assistant professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, College Park. She was also a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, where she is now an adjunct fellow. She holds a Ph.D. in public policy with a concurrent M.A. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley.