Senior Associate Editor
Mike is Director of Research and Publications at the National Civic League. He is an award-winning writer/editor/researcher with expertise in local government, political reform, civic engagement and urban policy. His writings have appeared in newspapers, magazines, books and blogs.
As editor of the National Civic Review, a quarterly journal founded in 1913, Mike has written and edited hundreds of articles on civic engagement, comprehensive community-building initiatives and local government innovation.
Mike joined the National Civic League as communications associate in 1994, as the organization was launching a national initiative to raise public awareness about cutting-edge examples of community building and civic engagement. The job marked a new career direction. During the 1980s and early 1990s, he worked as an editor and staff-writer for newspapers and alternative weeklies in California and Colorado, winning awards for investigative journalism and public policy reporting.
In the late 1990s, He served as policy analyst for the league’s New Politics Program, co-authoring a report on local campaign finance reform and helping to overseeing a project to revise the Model City Charter. In 2009, he was asked to author a report on civic innovation in local governments for Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement (PACE).
In 2011, he joined the research team of the Southern California Fiscal Sustainability Project, a three-year joint effort with USC and the University of San Francisco. Thanks to his comprehensive knowledge of local government and the history of municipal reform, Mike was asked to contribute the official entry on political patronage for the Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice (Blackwell Publishing) in 2014.
Mike has a Masters of Journalism, University of California-Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism, 1983, and a Bachelor of Arts, Plan II Honors Program, University of Texas, 1976.