Brown’s numbers guided Va. Gov. Kaine on tax boost; now they will aid McDonnell in opposing it

Ric Brown: Money man to 2 Va. governors

RICHMOND, Va. — For nearly 40 years as a state government numbers wizard, Ric Brown advised 10 governors on budgets and money issues, and he figured that was plenty.

As secretary of finance, Brown had helped Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine draft a budget with the deepest cuts in modern Virginia history and an income tax increase.

He was ready to box up his personal effects and depart when Kaine’s term ended on Jan. 16. His mind was already on the New River and the smallmouth bass to be caught there.

Then Gov.-elect Bob McDonnell, a Republican who made it clear he would not let a Kaine tax increase stand, showed up with a simple plea: stick around, we need you.

“I hadn’t planned on doing a four-year appointment. I made that pretty clear to everybody. He asked me if I would help him for … an interim period,” said Brown, an apolitical, soft-spoken economist who agreed to defer his retirement for a year, maybe more. He won’t say, exactly.

“It’s pretty hard to turn down a governor who asks for your help,” he said.

It’s not easy duty he’s re-enlisting for, and Brown knows it better than most. Since late 2007, the economist with an encyclopedic knowledge of Virginia government has watched state finances recede from the worst economy since the 1930s. Since July 2008, the numbers he crunched were so dire that Kaine was forced to cut the budget five times by a total of $7 billion.

“You can’t continue with the losses of the magnitude we’ve had. Twenty percent of the biennial budget has been lost here,” Brown said, lamenting the cuts he’s seen to respected state programs that he helped build.

There was sadness in Brown’s blue eyes as he spoke in an Associated Press interview of the budget shortfall’s human toll: more than 1,600 layoffs; reductions to public schools that both parties had considered inviolate; a one-fifth reduction in state support for local sheriffs and police departments.

“You don’t have anything in modern day history to rival the revenue trends that you see in this budget, so that means there is plenty for everybody to dislike,” he said.

When Brown started in state government in 1971, Kaine’s father-in-law, Republican Gov. A. Linwood Holton, included Brown on a task force launching the Standards of Quality for public education. Brown’s work set the financial framework of the system that still prescribes baseline academic standards for kindergarten through high school and assures funding for them.

In 1990, under Democratic Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, Brown became the top budgeting expert in the Department of Planning and Budget.

Republican Gov. Jim Gilmore made him the agency’s acting director in 2001. Democratic Govs. Mark R. Warner and Kaine reappointed him to that job. And in August, Kaine appointed Brown to his cabinet as Secretary of Finance, essentially the state’s chief financial officer.

Governor after governor appreciated his ability to project the consequences of any financial action they were considering free of partisan taint. To this day, his closest friends still don’t know whether he votes for Democrats, Republicans or a blend of the two.

“He’s the consummate public servant,” said Paul Timmereck, the last finance secretary to serve successive governors of opposing parties. Timmereck helped Wilder negotiate a painful recession in the early 1990s without a tax increase and remained in the position at the request of Wilder’s successor, Republican George Allen.

“Ric is the perfect guy to go through a transition like this. The (General Assembly) money committees respect him. There aren’t too many public policy issues that he hasn’t been deeply involved in,” said Timmereck, who retired in 2006 as vice president for finance at Virginia Commonwealth University and is now a member of the Virginia Retirement System board of directors.

McDonnell said the decision to ask Brown to stay was easy, given his expertise, the respect he enjoys by both parties and the severity of the state’s fiscal crisis.

“We need continuity in the budget process. It wouldn’t be fair for me to put a new secretary of finance there with about two weeks’ experience,” McDonnell said.

“And I don’t look at Ric’s job as being partisan at all,” McDonnell said. “There aren’t Republican or Democratic numbers. They’re either right or they’re wrong, and I have confidence that Ric will give the right numbers.”