Tony Levitas

Mr. Tony Levitas is a Senior Associate of the Urban Institute’s Center on International Development and Governance. He has more than 15 years of experience providing advice on both the functional and financial dimensions of decentralization in post-communist Europe. His area of expertise is in the reform of the regulatory frameworks that govern the relationship between national and local governments. In particular, his work has focused on assigning appropriate revenue and expenditure responsibilities to local governments; on developing sound rules for local government budgeting, investment planning and financial reporting; on the creation and regulation of municipal debt markets; and on the allocation and management of national government funds for education to both local governments and schools.

Most recently, Mr. Levitas has helped draft, negotiate, push through parliament and implement new laws on local government finance in Serbia, Macedonia and Bosnia. In Poland, he helped develop the regulatory frameworks for both general obligation bonds for municipalities, and revenue backed securities for their utilities. He also led a team that developed and implemented a per pupil financing system that made possible the decentralization primary and secondary education to local governments. Mr. Levitas is widely published on all aspects of local government reform and fiscal decentralization and has held lectureships at Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Central European University. He lives in Warsaw with his wife and youngest daughter, and holds both Polish and American citizenship.

Areas of expertise: Intergovernmental instutional framework and regulations; fiscal decentralization; local government budgeting; local revenue assignment and revenue administration; investment planning and financial reporting; municipal debt markets; education decentralization.

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