After 15 Years at the Helm, Brookline's Richard Kelliher Steps Down

Rich Kelliher keeps a copy Chris Matthew's "Hardball" on his bookshelf just so he can thumb to the chapter titled "The Press is the Enemy" whenever a local reporter visit him in his corner office on the sixth floor of Town Hall.

But despite the theatrics, Kelliher makes a point of returning every phone call he gets from reporters, and is fond of saying, "I owe you a response, even if it's not the answer you want." And he ensures his staff does the same.

But after 15 years of fielding questions as Brookline's town administrator – a title that masks the stature of a job more akin to a chief operating officer or unelected mayor – Kelliher is stepping down. He is one of only three executives to lead Brookline in the last 67 years.

In recent weeks, Kelliher has been recognized with distinguished service awards from both the Brookline Chamber of Commerce and the Brookline Rotary, honored with a joint resolution from the Massachusetts State House, and showered with gifts from colleagues and friends at a reception that packed the entire first floor of Town Hall. He officially leaves his office on Friday, July 3, to begin teaching classes for other municipal leaders.

Colleagues say Kelliher presided over a dramatic shift in the town's governance and infrastructure in his 15 years, and credit him with resisting the urge to spend tax revenue frivolously when times where good and shoring up the town's budget to avoid painful cuts when the bottom fell out of the economy.

"The easiest thing to point to in Rich's legacy is that all of the towns around us have been falling apart for the last four or five years," said Joe Geller, a landscape architect who was elected to the Board of Selectmen shortly before Kelliher was hired in 1994. "Brookline has done incredibly well."

A lifelong bureaucrat who got his start in the campaign office of Boston Mayor Kevin White and later spent ten years in the finance offices of Newton City Hall, Kelliher came to Brookline a time when the town was still reeling from 12 years of painful municipal budgeting under the property-tax collection cap imposed by Proposition 2.5.

Town officials had struggled to keep the town's operating budget intact through most of the previous decade, and the town's spending on capital projects – including road repairs, school construction and infrastructure improvements – suffered as a result. Kelliher remembers hearing a lot about the "shab-ification of Brookline" when he met with town officials for a series of interviews in 1994, and other officials recall a Brookline very different than today's.

"We had buildings that were failing down, infrastructure that was failing apart, and there was a lot of concern about our capital program," Geller said.

In his first years, Kelliher and his staff worked to develop a capital plan that was central to the town's budget, not an afterthought – a "wish list" as Kelliher now calls it – that received whatever money was left over after the operating budget was fully funded.

What emerged was a policy that prohibited the town from using budget surpluses and one-time cash windfalls – like legal settlement awards – to grow the town's operating budget. Instead, the extra money, along with a set chunk of annual revenue, was devoted to capital projects planned out decades into the future.

That policy – along with efforts to consolidate town services and reduce overall personnel costs – is widely credited with shielding the town from painful service cuts when state lawmakers suddenly cut funding to cities and towns in the last two years.

"Rather than creating new positions like other communities when state aid was flush, he plowed it into capital, which was sorely needed," said Town Clerk Pat Ward, a lifelong Brookline resident who was first elected to his position shortly after Kelliher was hired.

With the new policies in place, Brookline was gradually able to catch up work that had been long delayed under the crippling tax levy restrictions of Prop 2.5. The transformation was gradual, Kelliher recalled, but a few big projects, including the new police station and a $44 million high school renovation, soon followed.

Many current town officials point to those policies, which have changed little since Kelliher and his staff first crafted them, as central to the town administrator's lasting legacy in Brookline.

"They've basically been the underpinning of budgeting and financial decision-making as we forward," said Betsy Dewitt, current chair of the Board of Selectmen. "They've been reviewed and tweaked form time to time, but that's what has helped us keep our AAA bond rating when other town's are dropping theirs."

Kelliher also leaves behind a leadership team he was largely responsible for shaping. In his first year, he helped hire Daniel O'Leary as the town's police chief and Dr. Alan Balsam as the head of its Health Department. Along with Town Clerk Pat Ward – who was elected the same year – the two men are now the longest serving department heads in Brookline town government.

Even after 15 years at the helm, Kelliher said he never considered leaving the town until last year, when he informed the selectmen he would be renewing his contract on a year-to-year basis. He never considered a political career, and found Brookline's government a unique fit for his style and temperament.

"A long time ago, I decided that local government was where I wanted to be," he said. "I'm not a hard charger, I'm not a Type-A professional."

Though those that have watched him say he has a gift for the behind-the-scenes politics of municipal government, Kelliher insisted he's never wanted to run a campaign or hold a political office. He prefers to channel the authority of others to get things done.

In truth, there is actually surprisingly little authority in Kelliher's position. While he can recommend candidates for key leadership positions, it's the Board of Selectmen that makes the final hiring decision. His staff crafts the annual financial plan, but it's the Advisory Committee that sends a budget to Town Meeting each year. And though he can offer guidelines for how Brookline's government should be run, it's the Board of Selectmen that must approve new policies and Town Meeting that passes new laws.

But behind all of that, Kelliher has had his fingerprints on nearly every major decision and event in Brookline over the last 15 years, from last year's game-changing switch to state-run health care to the town's tercentennial celebration in 2005.

"He can deservedly take a great deal of credit for how he has managed so skillfully," said Dick Leary, Brookline's first town administrator. "He has assured stability, and I think there has been a feeling of confidence in his judgment on the part of the Board of Selectmen. It's been a stable climate on the sixth floor."

"You can only hope that we'll be able to find a successor who will be able to do deal with the very difficult two or three years ahead," he added.