Kent Robinson is a CPS Senior Fellow with an interest in local government service design, public revenue and finances, and public program governance. Kent has served as the project team leader for several CPS consulting projects evaluating small city police and fire emergency services. His other CPS projects have included the design of emergency mental health services, an annexation analysis for a small city, and projects on wastewater system governance and expansion. His research interests include the design of emergency mental health response, networked public service delivery, and the economies of scope and scale in public services.
Kent retired from the PSU Public Administration Department in June 2021, where he served as an Assistant Professor and adjunct instructor. His instructional portfolio in the Master of Public Administration (MPA) and Master of Public Policy (MPP) programs included Public Budgeting, Financial Management in the Public Sector, Foundations/Introduction to Public Administration, Public Information Management, and Case Study or Capstone Final Project. He is a co-author of the textbooks Budgeting for Local Governments and Communities (2015) and Foundations of Public Service 2nd and 3rd editions (2013 and 2022) all published by Routledge.
Prior to joining CPS in 2011, Kent served for five years on the Institute for Public Service faculty at Seattle University in Seattle, Washington. Kent served as a policy and program analyst with the American Forest and Paper Association (AF&PA) in Washington D.C in the early 1990s, where he gained extensive professional experience with federal natural resource and forestry policy, federal natural resource agency budgets, the federal appropriations process, and congressional relations.