Editor’s Note: This is the first of a series about the people who represent the alcohol beverage industry in Washington.
Robert Tobaissen, the new president of the National Association of Beverage Importers, grew up in San Francisco the son of a Teamsters father who delivered Royal Crown Cola and a mother who was a practical nurse before becoming a stay-at-home mom.
He went to Balboa High School, which at the time was 30% black, 30% white, 30% Hispanic and 10% Asian. “Most people in our neighborhood went to the city-wide academic high school,” not Balboa, he recalled.
“I got places because I had endurance, not because of some smartness,” he told us. Luck also helped. While Balboa wasn’t an academic high school – it was a community high school – he had attended an academic junior high, “so I got a lot of attention from the Balboa faculty.” He had a great GPA, Tobaissen recalled, which helped him get into the University of California at Berkeley.
Balboa High School “educated me about society,” he said, as he recalled watching a pupil pull out a switchblade knife on the first day of class, toss it into the air. The blade landed embedded in a desktop. “Berkeley educated me to think.”
While at Berkeley, he competed in track, running the 100-yard dash and the 440 relays. “I liked the 100-yard dash better because it got over quickly,” he told us.
His studies at Berkeley focused on economics, rhetoric and political science. He said he wished he had done more rhetoric.
He was at Berkeley during the early 1970s, but told us he never did drugs or protests, although he “shared his class notes with the protestors so they could pass their exams.” And while he passed through the Haight-Asbury, the countercultural center in San Francisco, he never stopped. “I grew up in San Francisco,” he said with a shrug when we asked him why.
He went to Lewis & Clark Law School, a Presbyterian institution in Oregon. Because his high school youth group had taken a trip to Washington, D.C., he thought he might want to move to the nation’s capitol.
When it came time to look for a job as law school was coming to an end, Tobiassen decided to take a one-week trip back to Washington. He wrote every Federal general counsel listed in the U.S Government Manual, which includes leadership tables and describes agency activities and programs of the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of the Federal Government.
One of those with whom he interviewed was Marvin Dessler, the first chief counsel for the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. When Dessler extended a job offer before Tobiassen had passed the bar exam, Tobiassen accepted. He took the bar, passed and began working at ATF in August 1978. Later Tobiassen would take two years to get a Master’s in Tax from Georgetown University Law School.
Dessler “had this ability to demand perfection. But he taught you to do research, to find out things.” Working for Dessler as a new attorney was very much like working in a Wall Street law firm, Tobiassen told us. Dessler “did not suffer fools lightly,” he added.
When TTB was addressing an issue, Dessler wanted to know what the Bureau’s predecessor’s position had been on that issue back in the 1930s and 1940s. That didn’t mean ATF had to blindly follow past precedent, but Dessler wanted to understand what the bureau’s historical position on an issue had been and why the bureau should either stick to that position of change it.
“I learned a lot about how to be a good lawyer under Dessler,” Tobiassen said. One reason: Dessler would rotate attorneys through all the units in the chief counsel’s office. These included not only those dealing with regulations, but also criminal investigations, personnel matters and litigation.
Dessler did this in part because he was interested in training attorneys but also to address a particular problem: When he became chief counsel he inherited an organization of “stovepiped attorneys” with narrow specializations. When three or four attorneys would retire, there was a good chance that Dessler would lose all his experts in that area.
After 1985, Tobiassen specialized in alcohol and tobacco regulation. And for 24 of Tobiassen’s 34 years with ATF and the Alcohol & Tobacco Tax & Trade Bureau, John Manfreda was Tobiassen’s first-line supervisor. Manfreda is now TTB’s Administrator.
Between 1985 and 1988 Tobiassen returned to his home town of San Francisco as a senior attorney dealing with alcohol issues.
“Those three or four years in San Francisco were very essential in making me a better headquarters guy,” Tobiassen told us because he was better able to understand how some policy under consideration in Washington might affect ATF’s field offices. He also gained an understanding wineries, breweries and distilleries.
When TTB was spun off from ATF as part of the Government’s reaction to the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, the Chief Counsel’s shop, which Tobiassen was heading, was a much smaller organization. That meant he couldn’t as easily send attorneys to field offices.
But, he told us, if the opportunity arose, and if he had relocation funds available, he would send attorneys to the National Revenue Center in Cincinnati or TTB’s San Francisco field office.
The “divorce” of TTB from ATF was chaotic. Partially that was because Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill didn’t believe law enforcement agencies such as Secret Service and Customs belonged in the Treasury Department. When the post-9/11 reorganization took place, O’Neill was happy to see Secret Service and Customs transferred to the new Department of Homeland Security. At the last minute he realized ATF was both a law enforcement agency and a tax collecting agency.
At the last moment, O’Neill arranged for the law enforcement functions of ATF to be transferred to the Justice Department but for the revenue functions to remain in Treasury in a unit that was to become TTB.
With that issue finally resolved, there were only 60 days before TTB was to become an independent Bureau within the Treasury Department.
At the direction of the Treasury Assistant Secretary for Management, the first 30 days were taken up with discussions with IRS about whether the alcohol and tax collection functions should merge with IRS. For a number of reasons, including agency cultures, it was determined that wouldn’t be a good fit. That decision was made with only 30 days remaining until TTB was to “go live.” John Manfreda came over as deputy to Arthur Libertucci, TTB’s first administrator.
Libertucci was concerned that its first major cases would demonstrate TTB was an active, equal partner with other Treasury Bureaus. “We were looking for cases that could get press coverage to demonstrate we weren’t some cast-off child,” Tobiassen recalled.
Tobiassen retired from federal service after 34 years and became a consultant. As a consultant, he never did any advertising or marketing outreach, he told us. People would call, ask if he could handle a project. “If I was too busy, I would decline,” and recommend several other possibilities.
Those six years taught him a lot about the industry that he has juxtaposed with his Government experience to become an “interpreter” when he meets with both regulators and industry members.
During those 34 years in the Federal Government, Tobiassen had often thought about becoming a trade association executive. When the opportunity to assume the leadership role at National Association of Beverage Importers came available, Tobiassen jumped at the opportunity.
Next: Tobiassen’s plans for NABI.