Meet Lee Roberts, Art Pope's replacement as budget director
Published September 6, 2014
by Amanda Jones Hoyle, Triangle Business Journal, September 4, 2014.
With N.C. Budget Director Art Pope stepping down from his post effective Sept. 5, his replacement for the job, Raleigh banker Lee Roberts, says he is already getting settled in.
Roberts has been working out of a temporary office down the hall from Pope in the Administration Building on Jones Street for a couple of weeks already, sitting in on meetings and getting to know the 60-plus staff members with the Office of State Budget and Management.
His biggest surprise so far?
“If you were a casual observer, you might think our finances are in a precarious state given all the headlines,” Roberts says. “But we have solid ratings -- AAA rating from all three agencies. We’re very well reserved ... and the more you dig into it, the better you feel about the state’s foundation. I’m not saying there’s not ways we can be better stewards, but the management of our state finances has been very efficient.”
His other big surprise?
“I don’t know if my uninformed perception is typical, but I’d had a sense that there were a number of state employees who would be just watching the clock,” Roberts says. “Through my early analysis, I’ve found there are very high caliber of people here – people who could be doing lot of things in places where they could be making a lot more money and who have chosen to serve the public.”
Gov. Pat McCrory’s appointment of Lee Ro
berts to the post in August came as a bit of a surprise to many of those who follow North Carolina politics.
Roberts, unlike his predecessor, was a relative unknown among state political circles, even though he grew up in Washington, D.C., and is the son of noted political journalists and commentators Cokie Roberts and Steve Roberts.
He’s also the only one in his immediate family who’s not a journalist. His sister, Rebecca, is a reporter for National Public Radio and XM Radio, and his wife, Liza Roberts, is editor and general manager of Raleigh’s Walter magazine.
Roberts attended Duke University as an undergrad and Georgetown University Law Center for his law degree, but he’s spent much of his career in the world of finance.
It was while at Morgan Stanley in New York City that Roberts was introduced to Tom Darden, founder and CEO of Cherokee Investment Partners based in Raleigh, and Roberts helped Cherokee raise $1.2 billion in investor commitments for its Fund IV campaign in 2006.
Shortly thereafter, Darden offered Roberts a job in Raleigh.
After two years at Cherokee and at the forefront of a looming economic recession, Roberts left to start his own company, Coley Capital, and teamed up with the principals of what is now Beacon Partners, a real estate investment and development firm with operations in Charlotte and Raleigh. Beacon Partners and its Raleigh managing partner, Gregg Sandreuter, is the group behind the Edison building project planned in downtown Raleigh and several other commercial projects throughout the Triangle.
Then, in 2010, just as the economy and the banking community was returning to sound footing, Roberts joined the parent company of VantageSouth Bank in Raleigh as its chief operating officer and helped orchestrate in early 2014 its merger with Elkin-based Yadkin Financial to form the largest community bank in North Carolina.
A year earlier, Roberts had been appointed by McCrory to the N.C. Banking Commission, and he says that was about when he started feeling the pull of public service.
“I grew up in Washington, D.C., and my family has been involved in public service. I’ve always felt it was the sort of thing I wanted to do if I ever had an opportunity to serve,” Roberts says. “I began conversations with the (governor’s) administration to let them know I was interested in serving if the opportunity came available.”
