Mr. Hayes directs PAG, the region’s metropolitan (transpotation and environmental) planning organization/Council of Governments with 52 staff members, and the RTA, which oversees the fiscal management of the 20-year RTA plan, funded by a countywide ½-cent sales tax. Both organizations are led by a nine-member board, including representatives from Pima County; the Cities of South Tucson and Tucson; the Towns of Marana, Oro Valley and Sahuarita; the Tohono O’odham Nation and the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, and the Arizona Department of Transportation.

Hayes holds a Master of Science in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Tennessee and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Boston College.

Prior to joining PAG, Mr. Hayes served as the Executive Director of the Central New York Regional Planning and Development Board in Syracuse, New York. The Board is a multicounty organization of elected officials, business people, and private citizens representing 152 municipalities with a total population of 730,000. Major issues addressed during his tenure at the Board included; restoration of portions of the Erie Canal, strengthening linkage between land use and transportation initiatives along major corridors, establishing small business loan corporations, ensuring high standards of water quality in numerous central New York lakes, assisting jurisdictions in environmental compliance, siting a state-mandated hazardous waste disposal facility, siting low-income housing, and preparing annual state legislative agendas to advance Central New York’s interests in the passage of key legislation. Mr. Hayes is a Vietnam veteran, having served in the U. S. Army’s 20th Engineering Brigade during 1969 and 1970.

Mr. Hayes is an active member of the American Institute of Certified Planners and the National Association of Regional Councils; he served on the Executive Committee of the Syracuse Metropolitan Transportation Council, the New York State Radioactive Waste Panel, the board of directors of Northeast Industrial Waste Exchange, Inc, and he was a guest lecturer for Syracuse University and the State University of New York. Mr. Hayes is the recipient of the 2007 Arizona Capitol Times Leader of the Year in Public Policy award and the 2009 Arizona Transit Association Friends in Transit Excellence Award.