William Ferguson Jr. and the education of a town

Before William Ferguson Jr. put his name on a Washington firm, he had a wardrobe problem. He arrived from Massachusetts to work for Representative Paul Tsongas with a ponytail and, by his own recollection, no suit. The future chairman of The Ferguson Group had come to the capital looking rather unlike its usual idea of a chairman.

The detail is funny because the career that followed was so concerned with particulars. Ferguson, usually called Bill, became a specialist in the machinery of local government: land use, water resources, infrastructure and the federal decisions that could help or complicate a community’s plans. A suit could be acquired. Knowing what to do about a town’s infrastructure took longer.

Born in the Bronx on October 31, 1943, Ferguson graduated from Michigan State University. His degree combined history and political science. Further studies took him to Boston University, the University of Southern California and Harvard. He eventually made his home in Charleston, South Carolina, where he was involved with the Harbor Entrepreneur Center; he also had ties to Co-Lab in Chattanooga.

Those entrepreneurial connections belong beside the Washington résumé. Ferguson built businesses around the work of public institutions. His customers had residents to answer to, budgets to defend and projects whose usefulness would be judged long after the meeting ended.

Three clients, and a very particular constituency

Ferguson founded TFG in 1982, starting with three clients. He served as its chief executive for more than 30 years. By February 2024, the firm described a staff of 45 working with more than 160 communities across the country. Those are dated measurements of a business that had expanded while keeping local government at its center.

The choice of customer helps explain the shape of the enterprise. A county’s concerns cross departmental boundaries. A road can raise questions about land, water, permits and financing in the same afternoon. A Washington representative serving that county needs patience for the connections between them.

TFG’s account of its working habits gives that proposition a practical form: professionals visiting client communities, sometimes several times a year, and sending legislative updates, grant alerts and specialized notices. The visits matter. A project described in an office can look rather different when someone walks the site.

For a founder, that kind of service creates an unusual challenge. The business has to grow without losing its knowledge of particular places. Forty-five people cannot all carry every client’s history in their heads. Reports, recurring conversations and experienced colleagues become part of the product. The firm’s name may be singular; the memory required to run it is shared.

A road, a loan, a rule that lasts

One of Ferguson’s consequential assignments concerned toll roads. He developed a strategy that secured congressional approval of $265 million for toll-road projects. He also led a lobbying team whose financing provision helped form the basis of the TIFIA chapter in the 1998 TEA-21 transportation law.

That distinction matters. An approval can help particular projects. A financing mechanism can be used again. TIFIA established federal credit assistance for transportation, including direct loans, loan guarantees and standby lines of credit. It was designed to fill financing gaps and attract investment from other sources.

Consider what a loan adds to the story of a road. Construction costs arrive before a completed facility has established its revenues. Repayment schedules and financing terms therefore influence whether a project can proceed. The useful work happens in the relationship between the public purpose and the financial arrangement.

The program continues to serve transportation projects. Its eligible applicants include local and state governments, transit agencies, special authorities and private entities. Ferguson’s contribution was part of a larger legislative undertaking involving clients, lawmakers and others. Its durability gives his career a dimension beyond an individual contract: some of the work became part of the rules available to subsequent projects.

Putting grant knowledge into software

In 2000, TFG founded eCivis under Ferguson’s direction. The platform brought grant research and management into an online service for government users. Ferguson was its founder and a former CEO, as well as a board member. The same career now included both a consulting firm and a software business.

The connection is easy to follow. Governments need to discover opportunities, understand their requirements and manage the work associated with receiving funds. A consultant can supply judgment and advice; a software product can organize information and support repeated tasks across many users. The two approaches address different parts of a familiar administrative burden.

eCivis later became an independent company and part of Euna Solutions. TFG’s 2024 description of the platform emphasized research and management tools for state, local and tribal governments. The founder’s original constituency had acquired another way to handle its paperwork.

The software chapter makes Ferguson’s career more interesting than the familiar picture of a Washington intermediary. He participated in building a product that could travel beyond a conversation or a client visit. Knowledge gathered around public funding became something that could be searched, maintained and used again.

Washington changed the route

The business also had to adjust when Congress stopped using earmarks for a period. Municipal advocacy shifted toward executive agencies and competitive grants. In reporting about Fort Wayne’s federal representation, a city official explained that TFG’s regulatory and agency expertise suited the city’s changing needs.

Ferguson’s own description was economical: “We do as much or more grant work than we did in the earmark era.” A business built around local priorities had to follow the available routes through the federal system. The underlying projects still needed attention after the political procedure changed.

The episode is a useful check on any account that treats lobbying as a fixed collection of introductions. A relationship with a legislator and an understanding of an agency program solve different problems. When the process changes, the representative has to know which work remains useful and which work must change with it.

For the city paying the bill, the test is concrete. Can an outside adviser help a project advance? Can someone understand a regulation, identify an appropriate program or explain the next requirement? Ferguson’s career occupied that space between a local objective and a federal process. Neither side could simply wish the other into a more convenient shape.

A scholarship with a return journey

In 2011, Ferguson launched a full-tuition scholarship for an ICMA member to attend Harvard Kennedy School’s Senior Executives in State and Local Government program. The first recipient was Douglas J. Hewett, then assistant city manager of Fayetteville, North Carolina. An independent panel selected him from 33 applicants.

TFG committed at the outset to fund tuition for three years. The commitment endured well beyond that initial period. In February 2024, the scholarship was named for Ferguson. That year’s announcement put the covered program fee at $17,400. The name recognized someone who had spent decades treating local government as a profession deserving sustained attention.

The program takes managers away from their daily responsibilities for three weeks. Participants examine leadership decisions and difficult public problems with other executives. The scholarship pays tuition; recipients cover their travel. Its value includes the chance to devote time to questions that a crowded municipal calendar can push aside.

Ferguson appeared in the program’s wider professional conversation too. At ICMA’s 2016 annual conference, he and eCivis CEO James Ha were listed as session leaders for a discussion introducing the Harvard program. Past graduates and scholarship recipients joined the session. Funding a place in a classroom had become an ongoing relationship with the profession.

Scott Andrews received the scholarship in 2024. He later described the experience as strengthening his leadership and interpersonal skills and opening career opportunities. Michael Pleus, DeLand’s city manager, was the 2025 recipient after applying in earlier years. In his account, he thanked Ferguson’s belief in local government management and the firm’s continuing support.

There is a satisfying fit between the scholarship and the business. Both invest in a person who must return home and make something work. A course ends; a city’s responsibilities resume. The benefit has to survive that journey back.

“We need to know the projects.”

William Ferguson Jr., on working with local government

The people who stayed

Ferguson died on May 26, 2024, aged 80. He left his wife, Susan, two children and three grandchildren. His professional legacy also lived in colleagues whose careers had grown alongside the firm.

Kristi More wrote that she had recently passed the point of spending more than half her life working at TFG, and identified Ferguson as one reason she had stayed. Jennifer Imo remembered him giving her an opportunity more than 22 years earlier. These are unusually specific measures of a founder’s influence: years of someone else’s working life.

Their recollections give the organizational history its human scale. A company’s growth is often rendered as a succession of totals. The people inside it remember being hired, learning the work and deciding to remain. Those decisions accumulate alongside the clients and the contracts.

Ferguson’s name remains on the firm and on the scholarship. One represents communities in Washington. The other helps a manager step away, study and return with fresh judgment. The former newcomer without a suit left behind institutions concerned with a much harder question: how a place gets the knowledge, people and resources to carry out its plans.