MSU grad rose quickly to helm the state's $55B budget
By Justin A. Hinkley
Lansing State Journal
LANSING, Mich. (AP) - John Roberts moves fast. Talks fast. Thinks faster.
Gov. Rick Snyder's budget director is a lean, kinetic 35-year-old wunderkind, tossing a ball while he speaks in a hurried cadence that gets faster the more excited he becomes, the Lansing State Journal reported. He'll start a sentence, back up, then plow on like he's racing to finish the thought before the next one comes into his head.
Roberts is a fan of Winston Churchill, and employees and colleagues said he's a bit like him: always thinking several miles and years ahead of where he is at any given moment.
"I've learned that I have to always have one of these in my hand," his executive assistant, Connie Minix, says while holding up a notebook, "because he'll rattle off three things in thirty seconds."
It is that energy, friends say, that propelled him from the East Lansing High School Class of 2000 to the George W. Bush White House in 2005. It was that energy, after he came home to Michigan in 2009, that pushed him in five short years from the state House Republican policy office to the helm of Michigan's $55 billion budget.
"His mind works faster than his mouth can move," said Scott Starr, Roberts' legislative liaison "But after a couple of conversations I realized he's one of the brightest young men I've ever met."
In an administration often criticized for putting figures over families, John Roberts is the man in charge of Snyder's spreadsheets.
But that appointment shows how off-base that criticism is, both friends and antagonists of the budget director said, because Roberts' heart beats as loud as his head. He's a man who's in early and schedules many meetings over dinner, but always makes time to take his 5-year-old son to Dunkin' Donuts. He spends as much time investing in his employees' professional development as he does the development of the state's accounting systems.
To Roberts, metrics are how you gauge the ways families are affected by figures, how you - like Churchill - look far down the road to understand consequences beyond today.
"I think it's very responsible to make sure when you make decisions you can pay for it," he said in an interview last week, a day after kicking off 2018 budget talks a full month before the 2017 budget began. "But that doesn't mean we're not going to try to do the right thing."
When Roberts looks back on his storied lineage, perhaps he can see the big corner office, overlooking the Capitol building, that he occupies today.
His father, Doug Roberts, served five governors in various positions, lastly as Gov. John Engler's treasurer, before heading the Institute for Public Policy & Social Research at Michigan State University. John Roberts' childhood was spent at inauguration ceremonies, listening to speeches and bumping into cabinet members at MSU tailgate parties.
His grandfather, Emory Roberts, was a Maryland state trooper before serving five presidents - Dwight Eisenhower to Richard Nixon - in the Secret Service. Emory was in the car behind Jack Kennedy when the president was shot in Dallas. Amid the chaos, it was he who secured the "nuclear football," encouraged Lyndon Johnson to leave Dallas aboard Air Force One, and flew alongside the reluctant new president back to the nation's capital.
Growing up, "public service was really drilled into us," Roberts said.
His brother, Douglas Roberts Jr., worked in the House policy office and is now a lobbyist for Consumers Energy.
The budget director started his career with an internship at the U.S. Embassy in London, then George W. Bush's 2004 reelection campaign.
The next year, armed with a bachelor's degree in economics from MSU, he landed a job in Bush's press office. By Bush's last year in office, Roberts was the president's special assistant for intergovernmental affairs, the White House's link to state and local governments.
He was in the Oval Office weekly and saw more than 25 countries and most U.S. states at the president's side, but he said his biggest takeaway from that experience was that "the ability to get things done in Lansing is so much easier than in D.C."
As Barack Obama was being sworn in, Roberts returned to East Lansing. He joined the House Republican Policy Office and started working on his master's degree.
He was named budget director in February 2014, shortly before the City of Flint switched its drinking water source to the Flint River, a fateful decision that ultimately caused thousands of people to become lead-poisoned.
By early 2015, the Flint water crisis was drawing international headlines, the attention of presidential candidates, and threatening tweets from Cher. Snyder and his team were increasingly attacked because the city was under the control of an emergency financial manager appointed by the governor.
In February 2016, Dennis Schornack, Snyder's former transportation adviser, told the Detroit Free Press that "the people of Flint got stuck on the losing end of decisions driven by spreadsheets instead of water quality and public health."
"I don't buy that at all," Roberts said last week.
Even with the state's $55 billion budget, or the federal government's trillions, spending has to be prioritized, Roberts said. Spending on one thing has to come from somewhere else. Snyder's focus on metrics is about making sure those priorities are made smartly.
"There will always be that in budgeting - there's always going to be more need than there are dollars," he said. "And that's why you need to be able to justify to the citizens as to, these are the things we prioritized, and here's why."
Besides that, Roberts points to investments Snyder made in the people of Flint before the crisis broke, tackling crime with added State Police troopers and expanding kids' access to dental care. That, and projects elsewhere like the Detroit bankruptcy and the recently passed - and highly criticized - bailout for Detroit Public Schools are all about making smart investments in people, he said.
Spreadsheets over people is "a talking point that certain people like to use," Roberts said, "and it's something that I have not seen. Any time there's been an issue, we have responded."
Roberts is supported even by members of the opposing party.
"The problem is when you only have so much money, and you're trying to apply that number to a crisis that you really can't put a dollar amount on, it makes it troubling for everybody," said state Rep. Harvey Santana, the ranking Democrat on the House spending committee. "And whoever is in charge, they're going to be the brunt of everybody's criticism."
"I'm from Flint," said Jacques McNeely, a career civil servant who works for Roberts, overseeing public protection areas of the budget, including environmental quality. "The Flint thing hit everyone like a hammer, and we're still struggling with the aftermath. But ... spreadsheets are on the bottom of the list when it comes to the issues."
Roberts said he's a proud Republican, but people from both sides of the aisle said he's an honest broker who's interested in hearing from all sides. He meets regularly with lawmakers of both parties, with department heads, with associations and interest groups - not always in agreement, but always with an open ear.
Those "are the things that the public probably doesn't see," said state Rep. Al Pscholka, R-Stevensville, chairman of the House spending committee. "We post the numbers and we have the hearings and everything else, but what you don't see is that we can disagree and not be disagreeable."
Roberts said that's "something that was done long before I was here, and my job is just not to break it."
But those who know him said it also comes from his love of policy and debate.
"He demands that you challenge him, prove him wrong if need be, but at the end of the day he's going to make the decision," McNeely said. "He's going to put everything on the table and make the best decision for the taxpayer."
Roberts said Snyder's last day in office, on New Year's Eve 2018, won't be his last day in public service. He won't run for office - too much time away from his family - and he's too young to retire - not very good at golf, anyway. In some way, he'll be a part of the debate for a long time.
"I love coming in," he said. "There are times maybe I don't want to get into a debate with somebody because I'm at a grocery store, but I don't think there's any time I say I'm not proud to be a state employee."
Published: Mon, Sep 19, 2016
