Get to Know Daniel Liss

For Daniel Liss, Principal Budget Analyst in the Budget Department, some of the best parts of public service happen behind the scenes.

In his role, Liss collaborates with other budget analysts, the general finance team, and departments across the City to design, monitor, and study Cambridge’s budget. He particularly enjoys working with departments as they plan their budgets and learning about the unique services each department provides residents.

“Without [working with departments] it’s just an intellectual exercise. You know, it’s a math problem,” Liss said. “But knowing that the work I do with DHSP (Department of Human Service Programs), or Community Safety, or all the other departments, will then impact what they’re able to do for the community, that’s what makes me excited to come to work every day.”

Before joining the City of Cambridge, Liss worked for nonprofit finance and administration, including for an organization promoting local government service. A report his boss showed him on the way his generation had shifted their conception of public service from working for the government to working for nonprofits inspired him to look up local government services in Boston, where he lived at the time.

“I went to the Boston City website and was just looking at the list of departments and reading about all the programs and thinking about all the ways I benefited from local government services in my life. And more importantly, reading about all the services that I was fortunate enough to not need,” Liss said.

He then decided that he would want to work in local government if he ever had the opportunity, and eventually, that opportunity came with the Budget Department in Cambridge.

When planning a municipal budget, Liss says it is important to balance providing important services to residents in the present while also ensuring the City is set up for long-term financial stability and success. This approach helped the City navigate the effects of the pandemic, and Liss notes that, unlike many other cities and towns, Cambridge was able to avoid laying anyone off when COVID hit.

“What was exciting about working for the City during that time is that most other places were looking at, ‘How do we balance the books? How do we make this work?’” he said. “We were looking at, ‘How do we keep things going, or in a lot of cases, expand services beyond what we did in the past?’ so that we can meet the greater needs during that kind of crisis.”

In addition to working with departments and helping prepare the City’s budget, Liss is also involved with Participatory Budgeting (PB) and the Community Preservation Act committee. While it is no longer a major part of his work, he served as the interim PB coordinator in 2020, and he is proud of the way Cambridge was able to both continue and improve the process during the pandemic.

“We were the first municipality in the nation to resume PB during COVID, to find a way to put it on, and while it wasn’t at the same caliber of process that would be acceptable outside the pandemic … we still did it and we were able to reach a lot of people and we were able to discover kinds of outreach that worked so well that we continued them even as we resumed going back and talking to people face to face,” Liss said.

Outside of work, Liss is a classical music enthusiast, avid CD collector, and long-time Red Sox fan.  He moved to Cambridge in 2009, and in 2013, he explored each of the city’s neighborhoods by eating at every pizza restaurant in Cambridge.

Liss most enjoys Cambridge’s strong community, ease of transportation, and location next to the Charles River and several old educational institutions. In addition, he appreciates how dedicated the City is to supporting this community through the public service he long aspired to take part in when he first researched local government opportunities.

“I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to actually fulfill that long-term goal, and it definitely has lived up to what I hoped it would in terms of just how much all my colleagues across the City care about their particular issue areas, care about the residents, and making sure we’re providing the highest-quality services that we’re able to,” Liss said.