The San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) is a regional planning agency for San Diego County. Its board consists of county supervisors, as well as the mayor or a city council member from each of the county's 19 local governments. Transit agencies, water authorities, a tribal association, the Port of San Diego, and other entities are represented to the board as advisory members.

"When representatives of all these member agencies come together, they take off their city-specific hats and do work that requires a regional perspective," explains Andre Douzdjian, CFO of SANDAG. "That includes housing, energy, shoreline preservation, and habitat planning. But most of the work we do is around transportation planning and transit construction for the region."

SANDAG has annual cash inflows that average $1.3 billion. Most of those funds come from federal, state, and local sources, and are designated for specific projects. As an example, Douzdjian cites the Mid-Coast Extension of San Diego's Blue Line Trolley. "At a cost of $2 billion, that was the largest infrastructure project in the history of San Diego," he says. "We spent the past several years building it, to connect downtown San Diego with midtown."