Daniel Wiles looks back on a wide-ranging career in municipal finance

Daniel Wiles has lived in southern California for more than two decades, but it hasn’t altered the ingrained humility of the Minnesota native.

Wiles, who retired — mostly — from a long municipal finance career at the end of 2024, doesn’t consider himself to be exceptional in an industry replete with people dedicated to public service.

“I have done some interesting deals, but I wasn’t with JPMorgan or Goldman Sachs,” Wiles said. “I wasn’t with a big entity like that. I never had that visible career.”

Wiles retired from his role as assistant tax collector-treasurer for Los Angeles County but continues to serve on the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board.

The career he did have left a mark on the people he worked with. He is a well-known figure in California public finance.

The 67-year-old said he was “surprised and honored” The Bond Buyer would want to run an article covering the highlights of his career, which he described as a “lot of singles and doubles, and a few homers.”

When Montague, DeRose and Associates Principal Jim Bemis heard that quip, the fellow industry veteran responded: “The baseball Hall of Fame is filled with people who hit doubles and singles.”
Over the past 40 years, Wiles was a public finance attorney, a municipal advisor and most recently in charge of investments and debt issuance for Los Angeles County.

He has managed more than $20 billion in financings and hundreds of projects as well as managing investments with assets under management of over $50 billion.

And he isn’t quite done yet, beginning a four-year term on the MSRB in October.

Wiles took a winding route to become a well-regarded financial advisor.

He earned his law degree from University of Minnesota Law School in Minneapolis 1982, where he was associate editor of the Minnesota Law Review.

His intent was to work in corporate securities, but when the chair at his first law firm, Stinson, Mag & Fizzell in Kansas City, Missouri, asked him to do his second rotation as a young lawyer in public finance, he agreed.

“When you’re a first-year lawyer, and a partner asks you to work in public finance, of course the answer is “yes,” Wiles said.

When his rotation ended, he was asked to stay in public finance, and again he said “yes.”

At that point, he didn’t have an abounding enthusiasm for public finance. That would come later, Wiles said.

He left Stinson to work for GE Capital, but eventually returned to public finance as a bond attorney.

“It gets in your blood after a while,” Wiles said. “You can have a good living, and do interesting work, and provide a public service,” he said.

He didn’t love being a lawyer, which is why he had five positions in eight years before he was asked to work at Evensen Dodge, a financial advisory firm in Minneapolis.

After three years there, he co-founded a law firm with two partners, staying there until Tim Schaefer, with whom he had worked at Evensen Dodge, recruited him to work for Orange County, California-based advisory firm Fieldman, Rolapp & Associates.

“Tim was very, very instrumental in how my career went,” Wiles said. “He showed me a lot about how to really operate in public finance, particularly in California.”

Wiles gave the speech in 2023 when Schaefer, who capped his career as California’s deputy treasurer for public finance, was posthumously inducted into The Bond Buyer’s Muni Hall of Fame.

Wiles’ shared his admiration of Schaefer with Rob Larkins, managing director and head of California public finance for Loop Capital. This connection was how Wiles and Larkins first met.

“He’s really kind and funny,” Larkins said of Wiles. “He is a demanding client and a very good MA in terms of protecting the client’s interest, but he was fair and a very good listener.”

Wiles was always very straightforward in terms of what kind of deal structures he was interested in and those he would not consider, Larkins said.

Even if it was a pitch for a structure he didn’t like, Larkins said Wiles would listen, and because he was clear about the parameters, saved bankers time and effort.

“The MSRB will be well-served by having someone so well-rounded and experienced,” Larkins said. “Knowing the muni market as a successful lawyer and an MA, he brings a lot to the MSRB.”

Wiles said he didn’t decide to move to California; he chose to work with Schaefer, and at Fieldman, Rolapp & Associates.

“By gosh, if Tim and Fieldman, Rolapp were in Anchorage, Alaska, I would have gone,” Wiles said. “Tim was just the best I have ever seen. It just turned out I landed in an area that has nice weather too.”

He considers his work on the $1.3 billion 91 Express Lanes extension the highlight of his career.

The Riverside County Transportation Commission extended the tolled express lanes on the State Route 91 divided highway eight miles into the county from the Orange County border.

It took from 2008 to 2013 for the project and the financing to come together.

“It was a really interesting project,” Wiles said. “It was really difficult to pull together and really satisfying when it all worked out.”

His contribution on that project, and on others for the RCTC, left a strong impression on former Chief Financial Officer Theresia Trevino.

“When I came to RCTC, I had bankers and everyone knocking on my door with what they wanted to sell and to get to know me,” said Trevino, who retired three years ago. “Dan helped me navigate the waters — and he was a great mentor.”

Wiles advised her on different debt instruments and helped put the team together for the 91 Express Lanes extension.

“He helped get me through some difficult financings,” Trevino said.

He also showed her how to explain debt instruments in a way that her board could comprehend, she said.

Work to finance the extension of the 91 Express Lanes “was the highlight of a lot of our careers,” Trevino said. “Prior to that, I had done commercial paper and sales tax financings. This one, in terms of a project financing, was a major event for a lot of us on the team.”

The financing included toll revenue bonds, sales tax revenue bonds, and a federal Transportation Innovation Finance and Innovation Act loan.

One of the standouts of the SR-91 deal was how effectively and collegially the selected team worked to get the deal out, Trevino said. The extension was completed in 2019.

Anna Sarabian, now a principal at Fieldman, said she started at the firm just a year before Wiles landed there, and ended up working as his “right hand for many years,” and they did “amazing deals together,” including SR-91, of which she was project manager.

“Dan can take any issue and approach it from different angles, look at it from a big picture perspective and figure out the best way to accomplish what is needed,” Sarabian said.

She complimented his ability to get a team of 25 to 50 people from different firms rowing in the same direction.

“He had a way to make sure everyone understood their role and that their contribution counts,” she said. “He was also not afraid to tell folks if he didn’t think something was a good idea.”

He had an uncanny sense of which questions to ask to ascertain the best way to structure a financing that made sense for whatever agency they were advising, she said.

“He was tough, but fair,” she said. “When there were heavy negotiations happening, he was always clear he was representing his client, but in a very professional and collegial way.”

Wiles contemplated retiring in 2019, but then the assistant treasurer position opened up in Los Angeles County, and he applied and got the job.

Within months, he would be faced with all the vagaries that COVID-19 wrought on the municipal market.

“In the beginning of March 2020, we were right at the point of doing a $349.5 million tobacco refinance,” Wiles said. “It was the first thing I had put on the list to refund that could add value, and the market just stopped. We made the decision to keep everything fresh with the idea when the market opened up, we could have the opportunity. And then in early June, high-yield opened up again.”

The county also issues an annual tax and revenue anticipation note, and the team made the decision to move ahead with it.

“We didn’t know how much federal aid we could have. We figured property taxes could be okay, but a lot of people weren’t working and we were concerned sales tax could drop off a cliff,” he said.

S&P Global Ratings gave the county its AAA rating, but assigned a negative outlook, which Wiles said he didn’t like.

“I described it as them putting a ding in my new car,” Wiles said. “But we got it straightened out ( and it returned to a stable outlook) after 18 months.”