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POLITICAL SCENE
Mullaney quietly helped RI through fiscal chaos
Katherine Gregg
Providence Journal USA TODAY NETWORK
There is more than one famous Mullaney in modern Rhode Island history.
One was Joe Mullaney, the legendary basketball coach who built Providence College into a national power in the 1950s and 1960s.
The other is his son, Tom Mullaney, whose license plate — NIT 61 — reflects both the year he was born and the year the PC Friars won their first National Invitation Tournament championship on his father’s watch.
Tom — who plays tennis, not hoops — built his own reputation in the halls of state government as the “unsung hero” who quietly saved Rhode Island from fiscal chaos on many more occasions than was ever publicly known over 34 years, under seven governors.
Among friends, he jokes about the alternate life he might have led after his father left the Providence basketball scene in 1969 to coach the Los Angeles Lakers. In his first season, the elder Mullaney led the Lakers to the NBA finals, where they lost to the New York Knicks. Tom’s long-time colleague in the state’s budget-and-revenue world, Paul Dion, recalls Mullaney telling him: “If those Knicks hadn’t beaten my Dad, I would have grown up in California. I would have been one of those beach bum kids in Los Angeles.”
But life led him in a different direction, to the fourth floor of the administration building on Smith Hill, where — to borrow a bit of sports lingo — he scored his own game-winning alleyoops, bank shots and, most importantly, blocks.
Last Thursday, more than a year later than planned, Tom Mullaney retired as Rhode Island’s state budget officer with a $121,116-a-year pension and a $40,000 bonus from the retirement-incentive program that former Gov. Gina Raimondo created before leaving.
From one state to another
Does Mullaney have war stories? You betcha.
But first a bit about Tom: He was born in Rhode Island, the fourth of the Mullaneys five children.
When he was age 8, his family began an eight year odyssey, as his father’s coaching career took them from East Greenwich to California; Kentucky; Utah; Memphis, Tennessee, and, last stop, Baltimore, Maryland., before heading home to Rhode Island.
His memories of that time are bittersweet. “We actually built a house in Kentucky. My mother got to build the house-of-her-dreams kind of thing. Nope, we had to leave it.”
Sometimes, “it was tough.” Back in Rhode Island, Bishop Hendricken High School was followed by Providence College, where he worked his way up to an MBA that sent him in search of a bank job initially, until a friend of the family mentioned an opening in the state budget office.
Ed DiPrete was governor; Lee Grossi, the budget director. On his second try, they scooped him up. The budget that year: $1.7 billion. The budget today after rounds of federal coronavirus relief dollars: $13.1 billion. Why should you care?
The state budget is not the easiest read but it affects the lives of every Rhode Islander to some degree, from the state of the roads to the quality of the drinking water to protection programs for abused children to the network of state and federally- financed aid programs for the poor, the sick, the elderly and the disabled. The floor to ceiling shelves in Mullaney’s office are time capsules of three decades of this history.
Working his way up
Mullaney started work in the state budget office in November 1987 as an assistant budget analyst with a portfolio of state agencies that by 1993 included the Department of Health. As it happened, he did such a good job he was recruited into the equivalent of a COO post at the health department, where he stayed until 1996 when he was lured back to the budget office as a supervisor. “And I’ve been here ever since,” Mullaney said last Monday. In 2010, he was elevated to state budget officer when his predecessor. Rosemary Booth Gallogly — a huge fan of Tom — took on a new role. It was “toward the end of that recession [when] things were starting to get a lot better.”
From his corner office in the administration building, overlooking the highway, he jokes, he can give traffic reports. He vividly remembers the day the traffic literally stopped for the Patriots’ entourage to the airport.
Put another way: Mullaney has seen a lot.
He can also put his fingers in an instant on page 206 — or any other page — in a budget document from four years ago on one of many long since abandoned spending plans for the troubled Eleanor Slater Hospital.
‘The right thing to do’
Mullaney calls the 38 Studios collapse the “most concerning” event on his 34-year watch.
It fell to him — and a handful of others — to explain to state lawmakers “what it would mean” if the state simply did not pay back the $75 million the state borrowed from Wall Street investors to finance ex-Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling‘ s high-risk — and ultimately doomed — video game company.
What “if they decided no, we’re not going to pay this, what does that mean? How do you then deal with the rating agencies? How do you do your next bond issue? Are you going to be able to sell your bonds?”
“I think we presented a good case and they decided [repaying the bond] was the right thing to do,” he recalled.
The annual push-and-pull over how much the state could afford to spend was not a whole lot easier.
“At some point, every governor looks at you and says, ‘Is that really what we have to do? Are these really things we have to consider?’ And you are like, ‘Well, yeah, you have to make a decision. [New] revenues or expenditure cuts; what do you want to do?’ “ More than once, his was the voice the public never heard pushing back against bad ideas, such as: a broad-brush across-the-board cuts to plug a hole.
“The problem with that: You can’t explain the implications of that to anybody. You really want to be able to say, we are doing this cut for this reason ... because it’s a lower priority or we think this is a better way to run this program.”
The other no-no in his book: putting a “fictitious number in the budget.”
He has a mug on his window sill, with a photo of former House Finance Chairman Steven Costantino talking to a colleague, over the words: “Call it undistributed savings and let ‘Budget’ figure it out.”
“I remember one year Governor Raimondo basically said ‘go ahead, put $25 million in [in unspecified cuts]. I’ll take care of it during the year.’ ” The upshot of that when budget-writing time comes round again: “Not only do we have to do the next budget, we have to also figure out savings for the current year.”
Mullaney is modest about his efforts — some more successful than others — to dissuade Rhode Island’s governors from following their worst instincts.
“He will go into retirement as an unsung hero,” says Peter Marino, the president and CEO of the Neighborhood Health Plan of Rhode Island, who once headed the state’s Office of Management and Budget.
Why? “Because, I am sure, there’s many things that have been avoided because he [Mullaney] was fortunately in the room to say: ‘Hold on a second. Here are the facts. Before you go down that path, you need to understand what the consequences could be.’ “ Examples? “He was certainly an advocate for making sure we repaid any bonds. And as you know there have been instances in the past where people have suggested that we should consider otherwise and he was very articulate in saying: ‘Here are the consequences.’ “ Marino also saw Mullaney push back against proposed cuts that had not been thought out, “and he’s like: that doesn’t make any sense.”
“Just because you think you can get the savings in DCYF, that’s going to show up in BHDDH, so you are not actually giving us savings. In fact, you are actually adversely impacting those individuals [who] really rely
on that service. “Let’s find another savings.” “What Tom brought to that process was somebody who knew more about the issues than anybody else in the room more likely than not ... a high level of problem solving competence ... and lastly, a steady hand.”
“He was always the adult in the room.” Though the issue is lost to the fog of time, Marino remembers the day then-Gov. Lincoln Chafee “stood up and looked at us in the room and said, ‘you know what, get Mullaney on this. He’s our best shot shot at figuring this thing out.’ “
Postponed retirement
Mullaney postponed his retirement more than once. Had he stuck to his initial plan, he would have retired in 2020 when he turned 59. He gave his boss, then-OMB Director Jonathan Womer, a year’s notice.
“Who knew COVID was coming, so when that hit, and they had just in the spring of 2020 put Joe [ Codega] in as deputy, I said to Jonathan, ‘look I can’t travel, I can’t do much, I’ll stay on a few extra months.”
A few months stretched into the winter of 2021, and then, of course, Raimondo quit mid-term for a Biden cabinet post, setting the stage for then-Lt. Gov. Dan McKee to take her place.
McKee’s then-Chief of Staff Tony Silva “called me up and said: ‘Would you mind staying a little longer and help the [incoming] governor with his transition?’ “ “So I said, well, I’m not really going anywhere right away, so ... yeah ... but no later than September, so that’s what I am sticking to.”
“I’m having withdrawal,” he acknowledged on the Monday of his last official week on the state payroll, still surrounded by piles of paper.
His plans? Paint his house, inside and out. Visit family. And drop by the budget office from time to time, as his predecessor did at crunch time.
“We never go away,” he joked. “So I’ll be around. I only live five minutes away.”
Copyright (c) 2021 Providence Journal, Edition 10/4/2021
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Mullaney quietly helped RI through fiscal chaos
Katherine Gregg
Providence Journal USA TODAY NETWORK
There is more than one famous Mullaney in modern Rhode Island history.
One was Joe Mullaney, the legendary basketball coach who built Providence College into a national power in the 1950s and 1960s.
The other is his son, Tom Mullaney, whose license plate — NIT 61 — reflects both the year he was born and the year the PC Friars won their first National Invitation Tournament championship on his father’s watch.
Tom — who plays tennis, not hoops — built his own reputation in the halls of state government as the “unsung hero” who quietly saved Rhode Island from fiscal chaos on many more occasions than was ever publicly known over 34 years, under seven governors.
Among friends, he jokes about the alternate life he might have led after his father left the Providence basketball scene in 1969 to coach the Los Angeles Lakers. In his first season, the elder Mullaney led the Lakers to the NBA finals, where they lost to the New York Knicks. Tom’s long-time colleague in the state’s budget-and-revenue world, Paul Dion, recalls Mullaney telling him: “If those Knicks hadn’t beaten my Dad, I would have grown up in California. I would have been one of those beach bum kids in Los Angeles.”
But life led him in a different direction, to the fourth floor of the administration building on Smith Hill, where — to borrow a bit of sports lingo — he scored his own game-winning alleyoops, bank shots and, most importantly, blocks.
Last Thursday, more than a year later than planned, Tom Mullaney retired as Rhode Island’s state budget officer with a $121,116-a-year pension and a $40,000 bonus from the retirement-incentive program that former Gov. Gina Raimondo created before leaving.
From one state to another
Does Mullaney have war stories? You betcha.
But first a bit about Tom: He was born in Rhode Island, the fourth of the Mullaneys five children.
When he was age 8, his family began an eight year odyssey, as his father’s coaching career took them from East Greenwich to California; Kentucky; Utah; Memphis, Tennessee, and, last stop, Baltimore, Maryland., before heading home to Rhode Island.
His memories of that time are bittersweet. “We actually built a house in Kentucky. My mother got to build the house-of-her-dreams kind of thing. Nope, we had to leave it.”
Sometimes, “it was tough.” Back in Rhode Island, Bishop Hendricken High School was followed by Providence College, where he worked his way up to an MBA that sent him in search of a bank job initially, until a friend of the family mentioned an opening in the state budget office.
Ed DiPrete was governor; Lee Grossi, the budget director. On his second try, they scooped him up. The budget that year: $1.7 billion. The budget today after rounds of federal coronavirus relief dollars: $13.1 billion. Why should you care?
The state budget is not the easiest read but it affects the lives of every Rhode Islander to some degree, from the state of the roads to the quality of the drinking water to protection programs for abused children to the network of state and federally- financed aid programs for the poor, the sick, the elderly and the disabled. The floor to ceiling shelves in Mullaney’s office are time capsules of three decades of this history.
Working his way up
Mullaney started work in the state budget office in November 1987 as an assistant budget analyst with a portfolio of state agencies that by 1993 included the Department of Health. As it happened, he did such a good job he was recruited into the equivalent of a COO post at the health department, where he stayed until 1996 when he was lured back to the budget office as a supervisor. “And I’ve been here ever since,” Mullaney said last Monday. In 2010, he was elevated to state budget officer when his predecessor. Rosemary Booth Gallogly — a huge fan of Tom — took on a new role. It was “toward the end of that recession [when] things were starting to get a lot better.”
From his corner office in the administration building, overlooking the highway, he jokes, he can give traffic reports. He vividly remembers the day the traffic literally stopped for the Patriots’ entourage to the airport.
Put another way: Mullaney has seen a lot.
He can also put his fingers in an instant on page 206 — or any other page — in a budget document from four years ago on one of many long since abandoned spending plans for the troubled Eleanor Slater Hospital.
‘The right thing to do’
Mullaney calls the 38 Studios collapse the “most concerning” event on his 34-year watch.
It fell to him — and a handful of others — to explain to state lawmakers “what it would mean” if the state simply did not pay back the $75 million the state borrowed from Wall Street investors to finance ex-Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling‘ s high-risk — and ultimately doomed — video game company.
What “if they decided no, we’re not going to pay this, what does that mean? How do you then deal with the rating agencies? How do you do your next bond issue? Are you going to be able to sell your bonds?”
“I think we presented a good case and they decided [repaying the bond] was the right thing to do,” he recalled.
The annual push-and-pull over how much the state could afford to spend was not a whole lot easier.
“At some point, every governor looks at you and says, ‘Is that really what we have to do? Are these really things we have to consider?’ And you are like, ‘Well, yeah, you have to make a decision. [New] revenues or expenditure cuts; what do you want to do?’ “ More than once, his was the voice the public never heard pushing back against bad ideas, such as: a broad-brush across-the-board cuts to plug a hole.
“The problem with that: You can’t explain the implications of that to anybody. You really want to be able to say, we are doing this cut for this reason ... because it’s a lower priority or we think this is a better way to run this program.”
The other no-no in his book: putting a “fictitious number in the budget.”
He has a mug on his window sill, with a photo of former House Finance Chairman Steven Costantino talking to a colleague, over the words: “Call it undistributed savings and let ‘Budget’ figure it out.”
“I remember one year Governor Raimondo basically said ‘go ahead, put $25 million in [in unspecified cuts]. I’ll take care of it during the year.’ ” The upshot of that when budget-writing time comes round again: “Not only do we have to do the next budget, we have to also figure out savings for the current year.”
Mullaney is modest about his efforts — some more successful than others — to dissuade Rhode Island’s governors from following their worst instincts.
“He will go into retirement as an unsung hero,” says Peter Marino, the president and CEO of the Neighborhood Health Plan of Rhode Island, who once headed the state’s Office of Management and Budget.
Why? “Because, I am sure, there’s many things that have been avoided because he [Mullaney] was fortunately in the room to say: ‘Hold on a second. Here are the facts. Before you go down that path, you need to understand what the consequences could be.’ “ Examples? “He was certainly an advocate for making sure we repaid any bonds. And as you know there have been instances in the past where people have suggested that we should consider otherwise and he was very articulate in saying: ‘Here are the consequences.’ “ Marino also saw Mullaney push back against proposed cuts that had not been thought out, “and he’s like: that doesn’t make any sense.”
“Just because you think you can get the savings in DCYF, that’s going to show up in BHDDH, so you are not actually giving us savings. In fact, you are actually adversely impacting those individuals [who] really rely
on that service. “Let’s find another savings.” “What Tom brought to that process was somebody who knew more about the issues than anybody else in the room more likely than not ... a high level of problem solving competence ... and lastly, a steady hand.”
“He was always the adult in the room.” Though the issue is lost to the fog of time, Marino remembers the day then-Gov. Lincoln Chafee “stood up and looked at us in the room and said, ‘you know what, get Mullaney on this. He’s our best shot shot at figuring this thing out.’ “
Postponed retirement
Mullaney postponed his retirement more than once. Had he stuck to his initial plan, he would have retired in 2020 when he turned 59. He gave his boss, then-OMB Director Jonathan Womer, a year’s notice.
“Who knew COVID was coming, so when that hit, and they had just in the spring of 2020 put Joe [ Codega] in as deputy, I said to Jonathan, ‘look I can’t travel, I can’t do much, I’ll stay on a few extra months.”
A few months stretched into the winter of 2021, and then, of course, Raimondo quit mid-term for a Biden cabinet post, setting the stage for then-Lt. Gov. Dan McKee to take her place.
McKee’s then-Chief of Staff Tony Silva “called me up and said: ‘Would you mind staying a little longer and help the [incoming] governor with his transition?’ “ “So I said, well, I’m not really going anywhere right away, so ... yeah ... but no later than September, so that’s what I am sticking to.”
“I’m having withdrawal,” he acknowledged on the Monday of his last official week on the state payroll, still surrounded by piles of paper.
His plans? Paint his house, inside and out. Visit family. And drop by the budget office from time to time, as his predecessor did at crunch time.
“We never go away,” he joked. “So I’ll be around. I only live five minutes away.”
Copyright (c) 2021 Providence Journal, Edition 10/4/2021
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