The Flow of Public Employment

Those are some telling résumés those Senate fiscal advisers have (emphasis added):

Peter Marino, former policy director of the business-backed Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council, will become the Senate fiscal adviser beginning Dec. 22.

He will be paid $125,000 a year, according to Senate spokesman Greg Pare, and he will play a key role as lawmakers decide how to close massive budget deficits in the coming months.

Marino is largely considered more moderate on fiscal issues than his predecessor, the recently retired Russell Dannecker, who has taken a job at the Poverty Institute at Rhode Island College.

Asked how he would describe his fiscal policy, Marino said this to Political Scene: "I'm someone who looks at things as objectively as possible."

His longest work experience came at RIPEC, where he served as policy director from 1995 to 2006. He previously worked as a budget analyst for Gov. Bruce G. Sundlun's budget office from 1992 to 1995 (alongside the governor's current budget officer, Rosemary Booth Gallogly, and House fiscal adviser Michael O'Keefe).

Most recently, Marino was an adjunct professor at Brown University. And in the last legislative session he worked as a lobbyist, according to the secretary of state's office, for clients such as the National Federation of Independent Business, the Rhode Island Association of Realtors and the Rhode Island Mortgage Bankers Association.

Marino is clearly very qualified, but what Rhode Island needs more desperately than anything else, right now, is a deep infusion of new blood.