Study Committee Biographical Information
Rudolph G. Penner, Chair, is a Senior Fellow at the Urban Institute and holds the Arjay and Frances Miller Chair in Public Policy. Previously, he was a Managing Director of the Barents Group, a KPMG Company. He was Director of the Congressional Budget Office from 1983 to 1987. From 1977 to 1983, he was a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Previous posts in government include Assistant Director for Economic Policy at the Office of Management and Budget, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Affairs at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Senior Staff Economist at the Council of Economic Advisors. Before 1975, Dr. Penner was Professor of Economics at the University of Rochester. His undergraduate degree is from the University of Toronto, and he holds a PhD in economics from the Johns Hopkins University.
Carol Dahl is Professor in the Division of Economics and Business and Director of the Joint International Degree Program in Petroleum Economics and Management at the Colorado School of Mines. Her research centers on international energy markets, government energy policy, and energy market modeling and forecasting techniques. She received a PhD in economics from the University of Minnesota and a BA from the University of Wisconsin.
Martha Derthick retired in 1999 from the Department of Government and Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia, where she was the Julia Allen Cooper Professor. Among her numerous works on American government are Dilemmas ofScale in America’s Federal Democracy (editor, 1999) and The Politics of Deregulation (with Paul J. Quirk, 1985). Before going to the University of Virginia, she was a member of the Governmental Studies Program of the Brookings Institution and was the program’s director between 1978 and 1983. She has taught at Dartmouth College, Stanford University, Harvard University, and Boston College. She is a recipient of the Gaus Award of the American Political Science Association for con-
tributions to the study of public administration. She received a PhD from Radcliffe College.
David J. Forkenbrock is Director of the Public Policy Center and Professor of Urban and Regional Planning and of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Iowa. His research is in transportation finance and policy issues related to the pricing of and investment in transportation facilities. He recently completed a multiyear research project sponsored by a consortium of 15 state transportation departments and the Federal Highway Administration on new approaches to assessing road user charges. Professor Forkenbrock was the Chair of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Committee to Review the Highway Cost Allocation Study and is a former Chair of the TRB Committee on Transportation Economics. He holds a PhD from the University of Michigan.
David A. Galt was Director of the Montana Department of Transportation from 2001 until December 2004. In 2005 he became Executive Director of the Montana Petroleum Association. Formerly he was Executive Director of the Montana Motor Carriers Association (2000) and Motor Carrier Services Administrator of Montana (1990 to 2000), overseeing regulation and permitting of truck operators in the state. He has been a leader in efforts to develop and apply information technology to motor carrier regulatory enforcement. He received a BA in business administration from Carroll College.
Shama Gamkhar is Associate Professor of Public Affairs at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs of the University of Texas, where she teaches courses in government financial management and environmental economics. Her research is on the effects of federal grant programs on state and local government finance, including highway finance. She has been on the faculty at the LBJ School since 1996. She received a doctorate in economics from the University of Maryland and master’s degrees from the Delhi School of Economics and the University of Bombay.
Thomas D. Larson is a transportation consultant and former Administrator of the Federal Highway Administration (1989 to 1993). He served as Secretary of Transportation for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania from 1979 to 1987. Before entering government, he was Institute Professor of Civil Engineering at Pennsylvania State University and Director of the Pennsylvania Transportation Institute. Dr. Larson is a Past Chair of the TRB Executive Committee and of the National Research Council’s Strategic Highway Research Program Executive Committee and served as President of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
Therese J. McGuire is Professor of Management and Strategy at the Kellogg School of Management and Faculty Fellow, Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University. Her areas of expertise include state and local public finance, fiscal decentralization, and regional economic development. She received a PhD in economics from Princeton University and a BA from the University of Nebraska.
Debra L. Miller is the Secretary of Transportation for Kansas. Earlier, she was Director of the Division of Planning and Development of the Kansas Department of Transportation. She was a member of the committee that produced the 1996 TRB policy study Special Report 246: Paying Our Way: Estimating Marginal SocialCosts of Freight Transportation.She received a bachelor’s degree from Kansas State University.
Michael Pagano is Professor of Public Administration and Director of the Graduate Program in Public Administration at the University of Illinois, Chicago. His research and publications focus on state and local taxation and budgeting practices, the relationship between politics and fiscal policy in state and local government, and infrastructure budgeting and finance. He was a member of the TRB Committee for the National Conference on Transportation Finance. He received a PhD from the University of Texas and a BA from Pennsylvania State University.
Robert W. Poole, Jr., is Director of Transportation Studies at the Reason Foundation, a private, nonprofit policy research organization. His research and writing have addressed privatization of government services, including evaluation of the potential for development of private toll roads, and pricing of public facilities. He has served as a member of the California Department of Transportation Privatization Advisory Steering Committee, the California Commission on Transportation Investment, and the Vice President’s Space Policy Advisory Board. Mr. Poole was the founder of the Reason Foundation in 1978. He received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Daniel Sperling is Professor of Civil Engineering and Environmental Science and Policy and Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1982. He is an expert on the public policy aspects of alternative automotive propulsion systems. Dr. Sperling is the Chair of TRB’s Sustainability and Transportation Committee and a former Chair of the TRB Alternative Transportation Fuels Committee. He is a National Associate of the National Academies. He received a PhD in transportation engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and a BS from Cornell University.
James T. Taylor II is a Managing Director in the Public Finance Department of Bear, Stearns & Co., Inc. He has developed financing strategies for major public and public–private transportation infrastructure projects. He was a member of the TRB Committee for the National Conference on Transportation Finance and the author of a resource paper on the role of the private sector in U.S. transportation finance for that committee. He received a BS from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University.
Martin Wachs is Director of the Transportation, Space and Technology Program at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California. From 1996 to 2005 he was Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies and Professor of City and Regional Planning and of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. His research is in transportation planning and policy, including public transit systems and evaluation of alternative transportation projects. Recently, his writings have dealt with transportation finance and with the relationships among transportation, air quality, and land use. Professor Wachs is a Past Chair of the TRB Executive Committee. From 1971 to 1996 he was on the faculty of the University of California, Los Angeles. He holds master’s and doctorate degrees in transportation planning from Northwestern University and a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the City University of New York.
