Columbus auditor persuades citizens to ‘Invest in US’

Megan Kilgore, the new Columbus city auditor, is off to a healthy start toward fulfilling her pledge to improve public understanding of city finances.

When running for auditor last year to succeed the legendary Hugh J. Dorrian, Kilgore promised she would seek ways to advance financial literacy and teach citizens how the city raises, invests and spends their money.

Earlier this month, the city sold nearly $ 400 million in general obligation bonds to finance a wide range of capital improvements, including a new Linden Community Recreation Center, wider sidewalks in the Short North and an upgraded Route 315 interchange at North Broadway.

Kilgore decided to dedicate the first day of the bond sale to individual investors. Branding the program “Invest in US,” she lined up a dozen brokerages to make buying bonds easier for individuals who hold accounts with them.

The bonds for individual investors were offered in denominations of $5,000 and $1,000. Kilgore wanted to go as low as $ 250 but determined that would have unduly increased the cost of issuing the debt.

“We ask our citizens to support our voted bond initiatives,” Kilgore said. “Rarely do they have an opportunity to invest in their own city. This is something I’ve wanted to do for quite a while.”

Kilgore had been inspired by the upsurge in crowdsourcing and social investing in a wide range of projects to improve quality of life — locally, statewide and nationally. Why not tap this same spirit for the city? Why not invite the public to participate in city debt offerings?

“There’s something special about being able to invest in the parks in which you walk your dog or the streets on which you drive your car,” she said.

Prior to the Oct. 2-3 bond sale, Kilgore said she’d be thrilled if, in this initial effort, the city could sell about 10 percent of the bonds — $ 40 million — to individual investors.

The result? One-fourth of the bonds — $102 million — were purchased for individual investors, with nearly $5 million for local citizens, $ 32 million for other Ohioans and more than $65 million in national retail sales, Kilgore reported.

“I’m extremely pleased,” she said. “Both our residents and our local brokerages came out strong.”

Kilgore said she has many other ideas for removing barriers to the public’s understanding of city finances. One of them is to build easy-to-use online portals to explain the dollars and cents of municipal operations.

The more that average citizens invest in their city, the wider the network will be of taxpayers who monitor those investments, track the city’s financial performance and hold elected officials accountable.

Kilgore, a teacher at heart, welcomes the opportunity. Growing up in Gallipolis along the Ohio River without a dad in the picture, she revered her mother, who taught developmentally disabled kids from K-12. As an adult, she has coached Special Olympics basketball teams. As an adjunct professor at Ohio State University, she has taught graduate-level courses in public finance.

And in a previous job as a municipal advisor at H.J. Umbaugh & Associates, she instructed cites, counties and other public entities how to make the most of their borrowing for capital improvements.

At a time of rising citizen distrust toward all levels of government, Kilgore’s initiatives are welcome medicine.