Henry A. Coleman, a native of Atlanta, Georgia, was on the faculty of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, for almost 30 years. He is currently professor emeritus at Rutgers. Previously, he was also a faculty member at Tufts University and has held adjunct faculty positions at The American University, the University of Maryland at College Park, and George Mason University. Dr. Coleman was a Brookings Economic Policy Fellow and Visiting Scholar at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. He also served as senior economist in the Office of the Chief Economist at the U.S. General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office). His federal government experience also includes serving as the director of Government Finance Research at the U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations. In New Jersey, he served as a senior policy adviser in Governor Florio’s Office of Management and Policy; as the executive director of the New Jersey State and Local Expenditure and Revenue Policy (SLERP) Commission; and as the assistant director for operations and research in the New Jersey Office of State Planning. His professional interests and research are primarily in the areas of state and local public finance and the economics of poverty. He has a bachelor’s degree from Morehouse College and a doctorate from Princeton University.