ERIK RANDOLPH

Erik has worked as a Senior Fellow with both the Illinois Policy Institute and Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Foundation. He also testified before Congress and two state legislatures, and he gave a presentation before the Secretaries’ Innovation Group on unique research on the welfare system. He has provided services to organizations in seven different states plus the Heritage Foundation. He also teaches economics at the York College of Pennsylvania.

Erik Randolph began his professional career in 1986 at the U.S. General Accounting Office, where he was trained as a program evaluator. He coauthored the GAO Staff Study U.S. Science and Engineering Base: A Synthesis of Concerns About Budget and Policy Development and received a “Special Commendation Award” for “outstanding contributions” to the staff study.

Afterwards, Erik became a senior fellow with the University-Industry Programs division at the New York State Science and Technology Foundation. In 1989, Erik moved back to his native Pennsylvania to work for the Office of Technology Development at Pennsylvania’s Department of Commerce, helped solidify the newly formed Industrial Resource Center program and produced a statistical report profiling defense spending in the state.

In 1991, Erik became an budget analyst with the Committee on Appropriations, Pennsylvania House of Representatives. He developed expertise in the legislative process, the drafting of legislation, fiscal analysis, forecasting costs of proposed legislation, budgeting, revenue forecasting, debt analysis, and capital budgeting. Erik wrote bill analyses, hundreds of fiscal notes, budget briefings, and white papers. He was given responsibility of special projects on behalf of the chairman. He organized forums and hearings on areas of public policy, participated on task forces, worked on bipartisan issues, and negotiated legislation.

In 2011, Erik became a special assistant to the Pennsylvania Secretary of Public Welfare. He led teams of executive staff on numerous projects, including preparing congressional testimony and recommendations for changes in federal law. He developed a Welfare Cliff model, demonstrating the economic impact of the welfare system on specific household types, and led a team of staff that developed a prototype solution. He led another group of staff that developed options relating to linking child support to subsidized childcare services, addressing a conflict between Court Rules of Civil Procedure on child support and departmental regulations.

From 1996 to 2013, Erik taught principles of economics on a part-time basis for the Harrisburg Area Community College.

Erik received a Master of Science degree in science and technology studies from the College of Humanities at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1988 with a 3.875/4.0 grade point average. He has two Bachelor degrees from the Pennsylvania State University: a Bachelor of Science degree from the University’s College of Science (mathematics) and a Bachelor of Arts degree from its College of Liberal Arts (political science).