Chip Eady (Edsell M. Eady, Jr.), a partner based in San Francisco, is known nationally as a thought leader on the funding and preservation of retirement health care benefits for municipal employees and their dependents. Together with some of the largest global financial institutions and health insurers, he has worked on new capital market structures and strategies engineered specifically for what is widely known as the OPEB problem. Results: more funding for more employers earlier, from a wider range of resources, growing faster and covering more costs than previously imagined. Chip expects this work will lead to health care reforms not yet proposed.
Mr. Eady’s public finance practice has been as diverse as the challenges and opportunities facing American communities from the 1980’s to the future, based on the turbulent events in public finance generally (and especially in California). Career highlights and examples of his work include:
- In San Francisco: the framework for the creation of the new life sciences campus of The University of California, San Francisco; following the demolition of an elevated freeway damaged in a 1989 earthquake, the basis for development of a waterfront park and the new world headquarters of The Gap, Inc., opposite the park; one of the first tax-exempt bond financings for a religiously affiliated school; after 20 years of blight, two successful financings of over 1100 affordable housing units (out of more than 45,000 as a career total); energy conservation in public housing projects
- In the San Francisco Bay Area: the first California bond transaction honored by The Bond Buyer as the national Deal of the Year (affordable housing); wastewater treatment plant upgrades and wetlands preservation; the public acquisition of hundreds of square miles of natural habitat for preservation and public education and recreation in perpetuity; the first tax-exempt municipal utility financing of a new community-owned universal broadband system, providing full and affordable access to television and the internet
- Around California and the Pacific Northwest: the financing of green energy projects including wind farms, solar generation, geothermal generation and the retrofitting of hydroelectric facilities for environmental and efficiency purposes; the first use of “plain English” municipal securities disclosure, leading to clearer and more carefully considered disclosure in the aftermath of the 1994 bankruptcy of Orange County, California; the avoidance of municipal bankruptcy and successful restructuring of existing debt for a city that survived a statewide SEC investigation without any enforcement action taken or agreement required; advising communities at risk of losing their only health care facilities as a result of unaffordable seismic retrofitting requirements for hospitals; helping a seaside community meet wastewater outfall requirements; helping communities understand the potential advantages and disadvantages of the “municipalization” of electric energy procurement through Community Choice Aggregation; helping the largest private landowner in Southern California finance new freeway interchanges and other public infrastructure involved in the most substantial real estate development ever achieved in Orange County; advising exurban communities competing for affordable housing investment through tax-exempt financing involving special assessments and taxes; lease financing of a metro emergency communication and dispatch system
- Around the nation: the first tax-exempt financing of a governmentally owned convention center hotel (at McCormick Place in Chicago); the first tax-exempt financial institution trust to receive a favorable tax ruling from the IRS (for funding state and local liabilities for retirement health care benefits); advising airports and other transportation agencies on the funding of health care benefits.