You will always have more choices than money.
Margo's Mantras
Retiring Metro finance director Margo Norton stands next to "Margo's Mantras" earlier this week. They are:
- Nimbleness and agility must work hand in hand with accountability and transparency.
- You will always have more choices than money. Choose well.
- Metro is resourced to do many good things, just not every good thing.
- Taking risks is not a bad thing as long as you first ask and answer: "How much risk are we willing to take in order to…"
- You can't buy trust, you earn it.
It's been one of Margo Norton's mantras in Metro's finance department, a tenure that began on April Fools Day in 2006 and ends on Halloween in 2012.
They're auspicious bookends for Norton, who spent seven budget cycles working on Metro's $500 million-ish budget through some of its best and most trying times. She's been Metro's finance director since 2008.
Her five budget cycles share one trait: Stability. While governments statewide have struggled to cope with declining revenues, Metro's general fund has remained relatively stable, hovering around $105 million a year since 2007-08.
How did Norton help Metro adjust to the recession?
"The challenge, and the challenge we were able to rise to, was A) Don't panic, B) plan and C) This isn't a passing fancy," she said. "The challenge in 2008 was getting the council on board with the seriousness of it, the necessity of making longer-term decisions."
The council was in the middle of some key endeavors – its Making the Greatest Place plan and the urban and rural reserves designations key among them. Both were expensive propositions.
But Norton's ability to turn complex budgets – Metro's annual budget reports are hundreds of pages long – into easily understood sentences has been a hallmark of her tenure at the regional government. (Norton is a thorough copy editor, and Metro News has periodically received emails pointing out writing mistakes, signed "Marian Grammarian.")
She didn't train as a numbers person. Norton went to Brown University to study Greek and Latin ("From the time I was a sophomore I never sat in a class of more than 25," she said), and ultimately wound up working as an administrator in Eugene.
Norton later worked at the state, serving as a deputy finance director and deputy labor commissioner. When Metro was hiring a deputy finance director in 2006, she saw an opportunity to end the commutes up and down Interstate 5.
It also was an opportunity to feel a connection with her job, she said.
"Some of (the state work) is so disconnected and remote from the work you do on a daily basis. Your neighbors don't stop and ask you what's the biggest deal going on at the attorney general's office," Norton said.
"They ask about the zoo, they ask about the convention center, they ask about TriMet," she laughed, poking fun at the common misperception that Metro manages the region's transit service.
Now, Norton's neighbors will ask her about her travels. She's already seen much of the globe – she's taken a month off every other year and traveled to places like Botswana, Portugal and Antarctica ("What I remember most about Antarctica is how absolutely great the air smelled"). Weather permitting, she'll be meeting family members in Charleston, S.C. for the first of many journeys.