Dan Vock (byline “Daniel C. Vock”) is a national reporter based in Washington, D.C. He specializes in state and local government coverage throughout the United States. He has worked as the Illinois statehouse bureau chief for the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin;  a staff writer for Stateline (a project of the Pew Research Center and later the Pew Center on the States); and a staff writer for Governing magazine.

Vock is a versatile policy reporter who has covered a wide swath of issues at all levels of government. His beats have included law, health, energy, the environment, finances, immigration and, most recently, transportation and infrastructure. He has led or completed several major projects, including:

  • A four-part series on the role that local governments play in reinforcing racial segregation in downstate Illinois communities;
  • A three-part series on the challenges facing Washington, D.C., residents with disabilities as they use public transit, paratransit, taxi cabs and ride-hailing services;
  • Magazine feature stories on Maryland’s long-serving state Senate president, treacherous roads on the Utah portion of the Navajo Nation Reservation, an Idaho city coping with new anxieties about refugees who have long settled there, the underlying issues that plagued Illinois politics and finances for two decades, the federal government’s changing relationships with states and cities under the Obama administration, and several city efforts to offer safer, more walkable neighborhoods and more transit options;
  • An award-winning profile of the head of the Alabama pension systems and the political empire he has built;
  • A five-state polling project gauging resident’s attitudes toward state budget problems during the Great Recession, along with budget analysis that was cited in a California gubernatorial debate;
  • A widely-cited report warning the public in the early days of the Great Recession of the financial dangers states faced because of structural problems with their economies and state government structures;
  • A first-of-its-kind project using a database to analyze voting patterns among Illinois Supreme Court justices, which included insight from all members of the court at the time.

Vock is a fifth-generation Illinoisan who has lived in Chicago, the suburbs and downstate. While a statehouse reporter, he covered two governors who eventually went to prison and one state senator who became president of the United States.

He is an Eagle Scout and his high school’s valedictorian. He earned his bachelor’s degree in English and German from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his master’s degree in public affairs reporting from the University of Illinois Springfield.

Vock has studied German, French and Spanish and is learning to play guitar in his free time.