Q&A: Jay Goldstone, who recently retired as managing director at Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, spoke with GFOA managers Ryan Lawler and Elizabeth Fu about his impressive career in both the public and private sector, and the current state of public finance.

• Author: Lawler, Ryan

Can you tell us what organizations and roles you've worked in?

Sure. I started my career working 38 years in the public sector with San Mateo County, California. I started out as an analyst. After about nine years with the county, I ended up transitioning to the city of Santa Clara, California, as the deputy director of finance--I helped implement their first financial system. When I got there and it was probably in the early 1980s, they were still manually typing 1,500 checks.

Then I moved to the City of Richmond in Northern California, and I was the finance director there. I was with the City of Richmond for about six and a half years, and one of those years I served as the interim city manager. It was an interesting opportunity for me, but it was in the middle of the election, where you had the sitting mayor running against a sitting city council member, and so the dynamics were very interesting.

From there I took a job with Maricopa County, Arizona, but it just wasn't the right fit. I only stayed there for about a year and then ended up landing back in California as the finance director of the City of Pasadena.

And I was there for ten years, not only serving in the traditional finance director and city treasurer responsibilities, but I got involved in development issues, labor negotiations, and so forth. That was probably the first time where I felt how important it is for the finance department to be involved in labor negotiations--not to be the lead negotiator, and not to necessarily be in every negotiating session. But prior to that, most of the financial projections of labor contracts were being done by the human resources department. And a lot of times, things they priced out weren't accurate, and the things they were negotiating, sometimes our financial system or payroll system couldn't handle it.

From there I moved to the city of San Diego, California. They were under an SEC investigation for securities fraud. And they had just changed their organizational structure from city manager council form of government to a strong mayor form of government. They were also restructuring their financial operations, and I first got hired as the chief financial officer.

I was with the city for almost seven and a half years. About a year and a half in, the then-chief operating officer left, and the mayor tapped me to become the chief operating officer. For portions of that time I wore both hats as CEO and CFO, and just chief operating officer for the balance of it. When the mayor was turned out, I was going to leave the city as well. I was appointed by the mayor, and I assumed the new mayor would want to bring in his or her own leadership team. The mayor did ask me to stay, but by that time I was mentally prepared to move on. I ended up staying for about three to four months of his term. I left in March 2013.

I became chair of the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB) during my last year with the City of San Diego, and I wanted to devote more time to that. I...