By Steve Peoples
Journal State House Bureau
While the hiring of the Senate president's new chief of staff created fireworks late last week, Senate President-elect M. Teresa Paiva Weed made another high-profile hiring last week.

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, "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 had 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.