Eric Mason, the CFO of the City of Quincy, Massachusetts, is juggling a lot of moving pieces in his hometown. He explained the origins of his career and how he became a CFO in part one of this Q&A series. In this part of our conversation, Mason talked about what types of action he has taken since becoming CFO.
In 2024 alone, Mason and his team have been incredibly busy. Quincy has not only been the first city in the U.S. to launch a blockchain-backed municipal bond offering, but also gave the recently re-elected Mayor Thomas Koch, the longest-standing mayor in the city’s 232-year history, a pay raise — making him one of the highest-paid mayors of any city in the country.
Eric Mason
![Eric Mason](/imgproxy/H73uIOlxCLusy8Kj-zimg19GlcoEY56MdrVB_5yvKsg/g:ce/rs:fit:617:617/bG9jYWw6Ly8vZGl2ZWltYWdlL2hlYWRzaG90XzIuanBn.webp)
CFO, City of Quincy, Massachusetts
First CFO Position: 2020
Notable previous positions:
- Chief analyst and economist, City of Quincy, Massachusetts
- Director of market research, Databloc
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
ADAM ZAKI: Quincy’s mayor, Thomas Koch, just became one of the highest-paid mayors in the country. Why do you believe he deserves this?
ERIC MASON: I think the way I look at it is that our mayor is like a CEO or chief administrative officer. It’s a hard comparison to compare mayor to mayor, so let’s compare the compensation of people who actually run organizations and, in our case, cities.
![Thomas Koch](/imgproxy/PO0XIVmIx165PAxehXt51Ojv7vMZ8Gp4rmbQyCh35Qk/g:ce/rs:fit:800:1067/bG9jYWw6Ly8vZGl2ZWltYWdlL1Rob21hc19QLl9Lb2NoX0dEYS1Hbm9YVUFBQ1NOSl8zLmpwZw==.webp)
Editor’s note: Mayor Koch’s salary will increase from $159,000 to $285,000, per various sources.
In the way the charter for the City of Quincy is set up, which tells us how we can structure our governing body and allows us to tax, Quincy doesn’t have city managers, which many mayors in cities across the country have. This is a big factor in our mayor’s workload and compensation.
In the City of Worcester, for example, both of their city managers make over $200,000 each, on top of their mayor’s salary. So, taking this into effect, our mayoral compensation wouldn’t even be the highest in the state, let alone the country, because we don’t have city managers. In adherence to our charter, the responsibilities that would be handled by city managers are handled by our mayor.
Our mayor has rebuilt four going on five schools in our city ... he has completely revived our downtown. We’ve produced billions of dollars in new property value. He’s our top guy in everything, he’s our mayor, the city manager, our CEO so to speak."
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Eric Mason
CFO, City of Quincy, Massachusetts
In our area, the towns that are doing well — the ones that look good, are developing, where people are happy — these are the towns that are doing financially well. Some towns get hundreds of millions of dollars in state aid. I’m aware of one town in the state getting $290 million in state aid. That’s our entire tax levy.
Our mayor has rebuilt four going on five schools in our city, which is largely unheard of, and he has completely revived our downtown. We’ve produced billions of dollars in new property value. He’s our top guy in everything, he’s our mayor, the city manager, our CEO so to speak.
There are some publicly elected officials in this state that altogether work on teams that make over a million dollars a year combined. The city of Boston has multiple city councilors to help their mayor, who all earn six-figure salaries. The City of Cambridge has a mayor and a city manager who work together. That’s nearly $400,000 to $500,000 of salary when combined.
A lot of cities in this country have mayors who are just elected policymakers. They aren’t operational. That’s the difference. Because of our structure, going back to our charter, our mayor’s job is completely different and much more intense than most mayors around the country. I think it’s a great headline that a lot of news outlets have published that we have one of the highest-paid mayors in the country now, but few have dug deep into exactly what goes into that decision.
Housing prices have skyrocketed and a majority of middle-class buyers have been priced out of cities like Quincy. If the majority of the homes here were owned by investors, like private equity firms such as BlackRock and State Street, would that be detrimental to the city?
MASON: This is definitely a concern for us and it’s something we are talking about a lot. For topics like these, I have to wear both my CFO hat and my economist hat.
We follow a corporate bond schedule — we issue debt four to six times a year. When credit agencies look at us, a big thing that goes into that process is our city’s diverse tax base. We have a lot of homeowners who have a lot of property here. Even in a recession, those people will likely continue to pay their mortgages, which means they’ll pay their property taxes, which make up 75% of our tax base.
If one company, BlackRock or any large conglomerate or group like that, stepped in and bought a large portion of the property here, it would increase both our alpha and beta risk a lot. It’s all mathematics. If said company or companies were to fail, and they held a large portion of our tax base because they owned a lot of property in our area, we would be in a tough spot. That would drag down the property value, especially if they had to sell their properties en masse to make up for their losses completely unrelated to the economics of our city.
We haven’t seen this yet here in Quincy, and I think there’s a mixture of reasons why. I think one important factor is we have a pretty high average income here — the average household income in Massachusetts is like $118,000 per year — so there’s much more of a fight to be had here. It’s not as easy to exploit those opportunities here as it is in poorer areas of the country where you’re fighting against people making $45,000 per year.
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But, I will say, from an economist’s perspective, I think that process might exhaust itself or be regulated out of possibility before it affects us. But, it’s still a concern of ours at the moment.
As CFO, my most powerful ability is the ability to collect taxes, it’s our most important asset. It would be a challenge if this was to be impacted because of [institutional investors] buying up real estate. But, it doesn’t change our liquidity position. I can’t go to the bank with an account receivable for my property tax; they’d have no way to enforce that. It’s like a cop outsourcing an arrest.
"If one company stepped in and bought a large portion of the property here ... [and] were to fail, and they held a large portion of our tax base because they owned a lot of property in our area, we would be in a tough spot."
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Eric Mason
CFO, City of Quincy, Massachusetts
I also find this real estate situation a bit bizarre because I’m from here, and my family grew a business here. I understand growing real estate prices protect cities like ours from these investors that you’re talking about, but I also understand it makes it much more difficult for younger families to come here and build lives.
What’s the deal with these blockchain-backed bonds you’re issuing?
MASON: You know, when I first discovered blockchain, I thought it was boring. I immediately compared it to something most of us have — a passport. It’s an objective ledger that serves as a validator where all changes made to it are visible. I thought of blockchain as a concept that was hundreds of years old. There have always been objective ledgers.
But, just like blockchain, municipal bonds are boring. When I was on Bloomberg talking about this, the host disagreed with me because she thought like a finance person, arguing a correct point, that they are tax-free stable income. And I said to her, that’s exactly how a finance person should think. But, as an economist, I think it’s boring —and we enjoy the boring.
There have been a bunch of things like we’ve done in Europe, but the city of Lugano, Switzerland, is the only other municipality to issue a blockchain bond. They sold two. Paolo Bortolin, the city’s CFO, flew out here and we met and spoke at Boston Blockchain Week together. The things that we hope to see are cost savings in our issuances, drastically improved liquidity, improved access to a broader range of investors, and enhanced transparency for everyone involved.
One day, I envision a Quincy resident being able to purchase a bond to build a new school, and then that resident drive their kid to that school. Then, see that payment from that bond goes back into their pocket. That’s something that would be great and hopefully, we can encourage it through our involvement with blockchain technology.
I think it’s important to identify that there needs to be a delineation between blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies. There’s a world of crypto within the greater world of blockchain technology, but, they’re still married together.
There’s no use for cryptocurrency in government, not in my opinion. Niall Ferguson describes currency as “trust inscribed.” Crypto means unknown. “Unknown trust inscribed” doesn’t match up well to me.
How did the mayor respond when you pitched this blockchain bond concept?
MASON: He wanted to know the pluses and minuses, and what types of benefits we could get for doing something like this. We discussed our goal, which is the democratization of debt for the long term. I gave him the example of building a school, in which we could save considerable amounts in interest payments instantly with something like this at scale. He isn’t a technology expert, but he does love technology. He just knows it's not his area of expertise.
In more detail, during Boston Blockchain Week last year, I met with the guy who runs it, Ian Cain, who is a really smart guy, who told me about how the CFO of Lugano did it and talked about how beneficial it was. Then we met again after the event, and he asked if the city of Quincy could do something like the city of Lugano did. I wasn’t sure, so I went to the mayor who told me the questions weren’t for him, they were for the [Security and Exchange Commission].
We can offer our debt at scale to Quincy residents without increasing our risk. As I mentioned, I am not allowed to increase risk. This can create a long-term plan to democratize debt without increasing risk for the first time in the city’s history. So, the mayor was on board and gave me the green light to see if it was possible. Now, just recently in early May, we issued $10 million of tax-exempt bonds using blockchain technology.
You have no product to sell, no potential shareholders to lure, no company to represent, yet you do a lot of media and keynoting at events and have built a pretty big name for yourself. Why?
MASON: I think people need to know their government. The idea that 20% of the U.S. economy is a ghost is something I’ve never understood. I gave my TED Talk on local government because of this. I have a $400 million budget with $1.3 billion in assets, not including my ability to tax. Even in Quincy, we have a college that’s one of the last municipally owned colleges in the country. We fix roads, build schools and downtowns; you cannot go through any city in America without touching some sort of government.
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I want people to understand their government — how these things work, and our decision-making process. I think we have a responsibility as government employees to teach this and integrate sharing what we do into our work. There is a huge responsibility we have in spending tax dollars, and I think those in government need to remove the mystique of what is going on behind the doors of their city halls.
You have a unique combination of work experience and credentials. You’re qualified for lots of private-sector CFO jobs. How do you deal with being recruited and what continues to make you stay?
MASON: I’ve had recruiters offer me positions as a CFO in the private sector that pay double my current salary and come with 25% bonuses. But, I love the people I work with. I love our team here. I have no interest in running for public office or anything like that, but I really enjoy being a CFO in a public capacity. But, maybe as I begin to start my family and grow my career, I will consider a change.
"I love the people I work with. I love our team here. I have no interest in running for public office or anything like that, but I really enjoy being a CFO in a public capacity."
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Eric Mason
CFO, City of Quincy, Massachusetts
The mayor has made it very clear that the door is always open without remorse if I get what I consider to be a life-changing offer. He always has said to me that he doesn’t want me to stay here because of him, and that family comes first, which I think is a pretty cool thing and is something I appreciate a lot.
Although the mayor has been a great mentor and person to me, I’m here because I love my job. I have no plans on leaving here despite the offers I’ve gotten, which has ticked up recently I admit, because right now I am continuing to help make the place I grew up in better while also padding my resume for whatever comes next.
This is part two of a multi-part Q&A. Read part one here. View the homepage for the series here.