The Fiscal Farmer: For over four decades, Bill Marx has tended budget numbers for the Minnesota House and raised crops and cattle on his farm.

• Author: Peterson, Eric
• Position: LEGISLATIVE STAFF PROFILE

After 45 years and 46 legislative sessions, 43 of them spent with the Minnesota House under seven different speakers, Bill Marx is riding into the proverbial sunset as one of the nation's longest-serving chief fiscal analysts.

Marx, 68, got hooked on the Legislature as a House intern. "I never really left the legislative process after that," he says. "I worked in committees, I worked in the Department of Education one legislative session, I worked for the Senate for a couple of years."

While sprawling spreadsheets have supplanted one-page, typewritten budgets, most things have stayed pretty much the same, including the need for concise communication. "One of the things I've always been a stickler for is: Write things in plain language," Marx says. "Give them the best answer you can. And if you don't have an answer, don't make one up."

Amid today's political push and pull, bipartisanship is as important as ever, Marx says. "You have to be able to be trusted by both sides. To do that, you have to provide straightforward information and provide everybody who asks the same information. We listen to all of the politics and political statements--then stay out of them."

Since 1988, Marx has commuted to the Capitol in St. Paul from a farm he owns and works with his brother in their hometown of Mazeppa, Minn., about 60 miles to the southeast. On the 250-acre spread, he raises cattle, grows various crops and lives in an earth shelter--a home built into a hillside.

'An Uncommon Kind of Way'

Katherine Schill, who started working with Marx as a fiscal analyst in 2000, says the earthen home "explains Bill in so many ways: It's just very practical, but in an uncommon kind of way."

Schill has participated in more than 100 all-nighters since joining Marx's office and commends his grasp of the state's fiscal process. "He's like a walking encyclopedia," she says. "He's been a steady and very...