After almost 20 years leading the public-policy think tank Public Assets Institute, Paul Cillo will step down at the end of the year.
“I love what I do. I’m not tired of it,” said Cillo, 69. “It’s more that I feel like it’s time.”
Since serving as a student senator back in high school, Cillo has been involved in politics. He’s served on the local and state level. But despite his time in elected office — including 10 years at the Statehouse — Cillo said he’s never felt like a politician.
“Legislators have to deal with a thousand issues in the moment. It’s really hard to think long-term,” he said. “I felt like there was a need for that kind of work, an independent entity that was doing that kind of thinking.”
In 2003, Cillo started Public Assets. At the time, the conservative Ethan Allen Institute was the main, notable think tank in Vermont. Public Asset’s stated mission, to “improve the well-being of everyday Vermonters, especially the most vulnerable,” tends to align with progressive politics, including racial, social and economic justice.
“What we’re pushing for are policies that the Legislature, the governor’s administration can enact that make the state work for everybody,” Cillo said.
Prior to forming Public Assets, he represented Hardwick, Walden and Stannard for five terms in the House, including four years as majority leader. In that time, he developed an expertise in education finance, eventually taking that nitty-gritty policy knowledge to launch Public Assets.
When the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that the state’s education financing formula was unconstitutional in the historic 1997 Brigham v. State of Vermont decision, Cillo, as majority leader, worked to develop a solution.
Act 60, Vermont’s reimagined education funding law, sought an equitable solution to per-pupil funding in every district. Cillo had worked on the idea years prior in collaboration with peers in the House Ways and Means Committee and analysts in the Joint Fiscal Office.
His committee colleague, John Freidin, recounted their years advocating for the transformation of education funding, traveling the state to win over voters and making each other laugh while poring over education financing data.
Freidin recalled a particular meeting in Ways and Means with a fiscal officer from the education department. Cillo wanted the analyst to present a single sheet of paper outlining education revenue and spending. When he discovered no such sheet existed, Cillo worked with the finance officer to create it.
Deb Brighton, who worked in the Joint Fiscal Office during the passage of Act 60, recalled Cillo’s distinct nonpartisan tact.
“Paul has this amazing combination of skills, that he can understand the big picture, he can understand small details,” Brighton said. “And he can understand how to present it so that people understand and buy into it.”
At the time, Vermont legislators lacked a model on which to base their new education funding idea, Brighton said. Act 60 required imagination, teamwork and exhausting hard work.
Catherine Benham, chief fiscal officer of the Joint Fiscal Office, was an analyst in the office when Act 60 was passed. She stressed Cillo’s leadership in bringing the legislation to fruition.
“Not everybody wants to pay attention to all aspects: details of the policy, and the politics,” Benham said. “He was willing to deal with all of that.”
After leaving the Legislature and founding Public Assets, Cillo’s new think tank worked on Vermont Transparency, a collaboration with the Ethan Allen Institute. The venture sought to make information about the state’s budget easily accessible, compiling data from various sources into a single, searchable format.
John McClaughry, founder of the Ethan Allen Institute, said his think tank received a grant for the project but lacked the expertise to create the transparency platform. He asked Cillo to collaborate, and Cillo signed off right away.
“We clearly disagreed on some things, but he was a serious policy analyst, and you could rely on his analysis,” McClaughry said.
Jack Hoffman worked side-by-side with Cillo as a senior policy analyst at Public Assets, helping to aggregate data for the transparency project. Hoffman, who worked for 25 years as a journalist, said Cillo taught him to write more concisely.
“My writing improved immeasurably through working with Paul,” he said. “Saying (things) clearly and precisely, and in as few words as you can. I think that comes through in our reports.”
Asked about his future, Cillo shrugged: first a year off, then he’ll consider what’s next.