The gold standard: Michigan's Gary Olson is the recipient of one of the most prestigious awards for fiscal professionals.

• Author: Hansen, Karen
• Position: Steven D. Gold Award - Interview

Michigan's economic challenges are staggering.

The once mighty industrial giant has lost 18 percent of the jobs and 66 percent of the auto manufacturing jobs--that existed 10 years ago. A decade ago, revenues were 9.55 percent of the state's personal income, today they are about 6.9 percent. Medicaid caseloads have exploded from 1 million to 1.8 million over 10 years.

It's been a steady downward spiral for the state where innovation was always a hallmark--the home of the Fords, Kelloggs and Upjohns, of W.H. Auden, Ken Burns, Ernest Hemingway, Madonna, Gerald Ford, Ralph Bunch and Rosa Parks, Isaiah Thomas, Jimmy Hoffa and Katherine Graham.

Now Michigan is struggling to close yet another budget gap--this time a daunting $500 million out of a general fund of $8 billion.

"We've been fighting budget battles for 10 years. This is what really puts Michigan in the forefront," says Gary Olson, economist and director of the Senate Fiscal Agency. It's his job, with a staff of 23, to forecast the economy, revenues and the size of the deficit and then guide senators to a balanced budget option and evaluate proposals from the governor. He has been doing this for some 30 years--20 as director--for an agency with an outstanding reputation for rock-solid numbers.

"BIGGEST HONOR OF MY CAREER"

Olson, a down-to-earth Midwesterner with an easy laugh and impeccable judgment in matters of finance, has a national reputation himself. He was president of the National Association of Fiscal Officers and staff chair of NCSL. And now he is being honored with one of the most prestigious awards in this profession. He is the 2010 recipient of the Steven D. Gold Award. It "honors professionals who have made significant contributions to state and local fiscal policy and whose work reflects Steve Gold's remarkable ability to span the interests of scholars, practitioners, policymakers, and advocates with integrity and evenhandedness."

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"I'm just honored to be getting this award named after him. It's the biggest honor of my career," Olson says. "I'm just overwhelmed."

Olson was the young, newly named chief economist of the Michigan Senate Fiscal Agency when he met Gold, one of the nation's foremost experts on state fiscal policy, at an NCSL meeting in 1982. Gold was the director of fiscal studies at NCSL, a prolific writer and internationally recognized tax policy expert with a passion for simplifying the complex.

The two had more than taxes in common...