Browne has been arrested three times for DUI offenses, most recently in 2015 following a motorcycle accident resulting in a punctured lung.

[7] Browne has been accused of corruption with regard to legislation he wrote in 2009 to give tax breaks to companies in a newly designated Neighborhood Improvement Zone in Allentown.

[8][9][10] In 2019 Browne announced that he had succeeded in diverting hundreds of millions of dollars of PennDOT funding to a project that will add another interchange on a rural stretch of Route 78, though he admitted that area residents oppose it.

His stated purpose in advocating for the interchange was to allow businesses to build warehouses on cheap farmland in one of the few areas of the Lehigh Valley where until then they had not proliferated.

[14] Brown took office on June 29, after the Pennsylvania State Senate failed to act within the constitutionally prescribed 25-legislative-day period.