Bill Lockyer
Encyclopedia
William Westwood "Bill" Lockyer (born May 8, 1941) is an American
politician
. He is the current 32nd State Treasurer
of California
, elected in 2006 and re-elected in 2010. He has also served as California Attorney General
and President Pro Tempore of the California State Senate
. Having held elective office since 1973, Lockyer has arguably had more varied executive and legislative experience than any other current official of the State Government. Lockyer is unable to run for a third term in 2014 due to term limits
.
Described by journalistic observers as one of California's most "colorful" politicians, Lockyer has long been known to speak with a picturesque frankness that has occasionally caused political embarrassment.
, graduating with a BA in Political Science
in 1965. While in school, Lockyer founded the Cal Berkeley Democrats. His first job was a public school history teacher.
Lockyer began his political career as a School Board member of the San Leandro Unified School District
, as chair of the Alameda County Democratic Central Committee, and California coordinator of Senator George McGovern
's 1972 campaign for the Presidency.
Nadia Lockyer has been a public interest law attorney since 1997. She currently works as Executive Director of the Alameda County Family Justice Center. In January 2010, she was appointed to the California Community Colleges Board of Governors by Governor Schwarzenegger. She was elected to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors
in the November 2010 election.
In his spare time, Lockyer attended law school classes in Sacramento and received a law degree from the McGeorge School of Law
, University of the Pacific.
Within the California Legislature, Lockyer was considered only mildly eccentric - a voracious reader with a yen for junk food and a lifelong aversion to green vegetables, a mercurial temperament he schooled himself to bring under control, and a wry sense of humor that won him close friends on both sides of the partisan aisle.
As a legislator, Lockyer was generally acknowledged to be a hard-working and masterful consensus-builder and negotiator. Long-time Speaker of the Assembly Willie Brown
stated in a 2009 interview that, by the time Lockyer left the Legislature in 1998, "Capitol insiders took his prolific effectiveness for granted."
environmental laws, including the first state regulation of trucks hauling toxic substances on California roads and highways, which preceded federal policies adopted by the EPA. He was a close ally of environmental pressure groups like the Sierra Club
and the Planning and Conservation League, backing their candidates for appointment to the Coastal Commission and opposing Republican appointees to the Air Quality and Water Board whom he believed to be biased toward industrial de-regulation.
Lockyer considered his signature environmental achievement to be his 1987 bill to create a Bay Trail, which he envisioned as an eventual 500-mile-long hiking and cycling path, a continuous recreational corridor, with adjacent bayshore parks and protected natural habitats, that would entirely encircle San Francisco and San Pablo Bays. Requiring city, county and regional cooperation, the Bay Trail marked its 20th year in 2009 with 293 miles so far open to hikers, bicyclists, joggers and walkers.
met at a restaurant in Sacramento with representatives of bitterly competing special interests - insurance companies, trial lawyers, doctors and manufacturers - to formalize their agreement to "the most sweeping changes in California's civil liability laws in decades".
After many days of painstaking negotiations, these warring interests had accepted a compromise bill that included "a drastic restriction in product liability laws offset by fee increases for lawyers prosecuting medical malpractice cases. Doctors got promises that protections already in place against lawsuits would not be touched. Insurance companies won a reprieve from threatened regulations gaining momentum in the Legislature." This compromise had already been worked out; the dinner was meant to ratify a future "peace pact" among all the concerned parties to abide by the compromise.
Lockyer, who had acted as mediator during the earlier negotiations, scribbled the terms of the
"pact" on a restaurant cloth napkin, and so ended a political war. The compromise bill was then ramrodded through the Assembly and State Senate on the last night of that year's legislative session, and was signed into law by Republican Governor George Deukmejian
.
The "napkin deal" became legendary in the State Capitol - though the legend grew to mistakenly confuse the long negotiations with the final culinary act of peace-making. Proudly reproducing the original napkin on a poster titled "Tort-Mania 1987", Lockyer and Brown regarded the special interests compromise and conciliation they had arranged as a great legislative accomplishment. "The public is better served", Lockyer said at the time, "when these groups are trying to mend rather than tear the fabric of society".
in 1996 required California to enact “welfare-to-work” legislation to help welfare recipients move from government assistance to employment and “self-sufficiency”. The resulting establishment of a new CalWORKS (California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids) program had a major affect on the State budget, propelling difficult negotiations between the Democratic Legislature and conservative Republican Governor Pete Wilson
.
As Senate President Pro Tem, Lockyer was involved in these private negotiations, which, he later recalled to journalist Daniel Weintraub, produced the State's “last... old-fashioned balanced budget.”
Lockyer felt his large staff of some 2000 attorneys, and the entire state Department of Justice, had to be radically restructured and reinvigorated - first, to modernize the relationship between the Attorney General and the California law enforcement community. Having grown up in the Berkeley 'Sixties atmosphere of anti-police rhetoric, he now found himself called the State's "Top Cop". Lockyer provided new technical support services for all of the State's 90,000 law enforcement officers, including those in neglected smaller departments. He also insisted on attending memorial services for every officer in the State who was killed in the line of duty.
At the same time, Lockyer steered the Justice Department to a new legal activism that reflected his liberal values in such areas of litigation and regulation as civil rights and anti-trust enforcement and consumer and environmental protection. He became one of the two most prominent state Attorney Generals in the nation, rivaled in media attention only by New York's Eliot Spitzer
. The two men were personal rivals as well, once nearly coming to blows after "screaming expletives at each other" at a Los Angeles convention of the National Association of Attorneys General. That organization elected Lockyer its President in 2003. Lockyer was popular among the other AGs, and respected for his legal initiatives.
As Attorney General, Lockyer sometimes had to defend official positions he found personally objectionable, such as defending a state employee accused of sexual harassment; or, in 2004, asking the courts to invalidate San Francisco same-sex marriage licenses which conflicted with State law, though Lockyer personally supported gay marriage.
Sometimes the positions Lockyer defended matched his own, such as when he defended California's 1996 legalization of medical marijuana against federal attacks by the Bush
Administration. Lockyer found this particularly satisfying as he had come to strongly support "compassionate use" of Marijuana after living through his mother's and younger sister's deaths from leukemia
.
Lockyer was unable to run for a third term in 2006 due to term limits
and was succeeded by Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown
.
His predecessor had actively promoted legislation aimed at curbing sex crimes, notably California's version of "Megan's Law
", which required authorities to make publicly available registration information provided to local Police by former child molesters, rapists and others sex offenders after being released from custody. But the public could only access this information about registered sex offenders living in their communities by visiting a Police station or calling a 900 toll-line number, until Lockyer sponsored legislation requiring the data to be posted on a public website. Less than 90 days after the bill was signed into law, the website was running, listing personal details about more than 60,000 past sex offenders, together with an interactive map that allowed users to search their neighborhoods. The website accessed by 27 million users in 18 months. However, it faced complaints that the information was outdated; that there were too many restrictions on use of the information by employers, landlords, schools and insurance agents, or, as the ACLU contended, too few restrictions to protect the civil liberties of those who had already paid their debt to society.
Similar problems followed from a bio-tech achievement of which Lockyer was especially proud - expansion of State Crime Lab facilities to process DNA genetic samples taken from convicted felons, aiming to create the largest state-run DNA criminal data-bank in the country. Law enforcement officials said this would be a boon to solving a growing backlog of often "cold" investigations of violent unsolved crimes. But the lab soon developed its own massive backlog, with tens of thousands of unprocessed and non-prioritized DNA samples languishing in refrigerators, still to be placed in the offender database. A voter-approved measure of 2004 that allowed police to gather DNA, not just from convicted violent criminals, but from anyone arrested, even without charge or conviction, for any felony, violent or otherwise, led Lockyer himself to express reservations. "I personally wouldn't have put arrests in the measure," he said, adding that he would also have made it simpler for innocent people to get their information removed from the files - a complaint of civil libertarians who raised the specter of innocent people being kept in the same database as convicted armed felons.
After a Seattle company unveiled a new technology for "coding" individual bullets, Lockyer sponsored the first legislation in the country which would have required all handgun (but not rifle) ammunition sold in California to be engraved with a unique serial identification number. "We are losing too many of our young people to seemingly random shootings and anonymous killers," said Lockyer. The bill "will strip criminals of their anonymity and give law enforcement evidence it can use to quickly and effectively solve more gun crimes." The National Rifle Association
and other gun rights groups - already at odds with Lockyer over enforcement of State prohibitions against semi-automatic rifles - strongly condemned the plan, saying criminals could easily obtain unmarked ammunition and that the whole process would create a costly enforcement bureaucracy. Manufacturers also opposed the measure as economically disastrous, since the engraving machines would cost up to half a million dollars each and would make virtually obsolete tens of millions of dollars in existing manufacturing equipment. The bill died in the Legislature.
It later emerged that the "crisis" stemmed in part from illegal practices by energy corporations such as the now-defunct Enron
. The exposure of these hidden offenses began in August 2000 when Lockyer created an Energy Task Force to launch the State's first investigation of alleged price gouging
by power companies.
The Wall Street Journal
scoffed at million-dollar rewards offered by the Attorney General's office for information about illegal conduct by energy powers, dismissing the allegations as unsupported by clear evidence. But such probes eventually led to some five billion dollars in brokered settlements by Enron and a half dozen other corporations which admitted to "gaming" the State's deregulated energy system.
During the Enron scandal
of 2001 which led to the then-largest corporate bankruptcy in American history, Lockyer achieved some notoriety for his public quip, "I would love to personally escort Ken Lay[ Enron
CEO Kenneth Lay
] to an 8-by-10 cell that he could share with a tattoo
ed dude
who says, 'Hi, my name is Spike, honey'". Intended to be an off-color comment on the impunity of white collar criminals, this remark was instead widely condemned as an endorsement of prison rape
. Lockyer later apologized for the statement in a letter to the Los Angeles Times
, saying, "My anger over the activities of energy barons doesn't come close to my lifelong outrage at the crime of rape. ... I guess I let my anger get the better of me..."
(Lay later died of a heart attack, before he could serve any time in prison.)
. Initial reaction was mixed, with some environmental groups being supportive, and an auto industry trade calling it a 'nuisance suit'. A similar suit in New York
had been dismissed by a federal court.
The California suit was dismissed on September 17, 2007, with the court saying that "The adjudication of plaintiff's claim would require the court to balance the competing interests of reducing global warming emissions and the interests of advancing and preserving economic and industrial development."
pretexting scandal to ascertain whether or not the investigators authorized by Chairman Patricia C. Dunn
to discover the source of leaks from within the company illegally obtained the phone records of HP board members and journalists. Charges were subsequently brought against Dunn, which were dismissed by the court in 2007.
qualified for the ballot in July 2003, with a special election, scheduled for October, to include both a referendum on the recall itself and a list of candidates vying to replace Davis if the recall succeeded. With some arm-twisting by US Senator Dianne Feinstein
, all the potential Democratic candidates, including Lockyer, agreed not to run, in the hope that this would strengthen Davis' campaign to defeat the recall.
At the start, it appeared that the strongest Republican candidate would be former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan
, who had unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for Governor the previous year. Lockyer, at the start of August, publicly warned Davis and his political consultants against a repeat effort to sabotage Riordan's candidacy by negative attack ads: "If they do the trashy campaign on Dick Riordan ... I think there are going to be prominent Democrats that will defect and just say, 'We're tired of that puke politics. Don't you dare do it again or we're just going to help pull the plug.'"
Five days later, Arnold Schwarzenegger
announced that he would run as a Republican in the recall election. Lockyer and Schwarzenegger had been casual friends since Lockyer's State Senate years, when the actor had chaired the Governor's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, and the two men had together toured charter schools in southern California. Later, Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante
announced he would become the only prominent Democrat to place his name on the recall ballot.
On October 7, by a decisive vote, Davis was recalled, and Schwarzenegger was elected to replace him. Two weeks later, at a UC Berkeley post-mortem conference of the election, Lockyer announced that while he had voted against the recall, he had also voted for Schwarzenegger. He explained that "Arnold represented... hope, change, reform, opportunity, upbeat problem solving".
Despite some support from San Francisco radio talk show personality Ronn Owens
, who hailed Lockyer's "courage" and "independence", fellow Democrats and feminists reacted bitterly to Lockyer's surprise announcement.
Soon after the recall election, Lockyer began contemplating his own run for governor in the 2006 election. Inspired by discussions with futurist Peter Schwartz
, he tried to lay the groundwork for a lofty, issues-oriented campaign.
In January 2005, while still Attorney General, Lockyer tentatively announced his candidacy for governor: "the one and only office that has held abiding interest for me since I left the Legislature... It's the job I want, not only because I think I'll be a great executive, but because I think that I can and will lead the best campaign you've ever seen, a winning Democratic campaign of ideas, ideals and inspiration to stake out a great future for California."
Lockyer changed his mind four months later, sensing a lack of interest among voters. In June 2005, Lockyer announced he would instead run for State Treasurer. He was elected to that office in November 2006.
and CalSTRS
, the two largest public employee pension funds in the United States) Lockyer tried to use the influence of his office in the aid of various environmental causes. These attempts included:
Based on such State programs, Lockyer also sponsored federal legislation (H.R.3525,“Private Activity Bonds for Clean Energy Projects”) introduced in July 2009 by California Congressman Mike Thompson
to provide tax-exempt bond financing nationally for private sector Renewable Energy projects, Zero-emission vehicle purchases, and "green" manufacturing facilities.
called "another atrocious, short-sighted, gimmicky budget that set a record for procrastination" and "wreaked havoc all across California among small business vendors, healthcare centers and nursing homes that couldn't be paid by the state until a budget was enacted."
Lockyer was also critical of the budget, describing its budgetary provisions to Skelton as "banana republic financing", based on accounting gimmicks (that "give gimmicks a bad name"), "phony inflated estimates of revenue" and a "boondoggle" of "massive" corporate tax breaks at a time of mounting State deficit.
In 2009, it was discovered that the state faced a $25 billion deficit, following a sharp drop in tax revenues.
As negotiations began to revise the state budget, Lockyer tried to convince U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to provide a guarantee for state bond payments. "A fiscal meltdown by California ... would surely destabilize the U.S., if not worldwide financial markets," Lockyer wrote to Geithner on May 13. The Obama Administration declined the request.
Earlier, Lockyer warned the legislative conference committee that private lenders would be leery of any more "smoke-and-mirrors accounting tricks" and that lawmakers would have to rely heavily on spending cuts to balance the budget: "It seems to me that the kind of budget we will require before the end of June is almost entirely cuts...My suggestion to you is don't delay the pain. It's going to be awful, but just get it done. It's going to be worse if it doesn't get done."
Lockyer was also quoted as telling Democratic legislators that, "fair or not", angry voters blamed them for "12 years of flowing red ink". "Why don't you start with the realization that probably none of you are going to be back here next year?", after the 2010 elections. "You're not going to get reelected. Just put the politics out of your brain...That's a very liberating thought, and with it you can get a lot done."
When the Legislature failed to pass a balanced budget before the start of the new fiscal year on July 1, 2009, State Controller John Chiang began issuing IOUs to some state creditors. Lockyer suggested having a respected intermediary mediate between the Republican Governor and the Democratic-controlled Legislature. Republican State Senator Bob Huff
scoffed at the idea, saying, "No caucus is going to go with that... I'm not going to vote for new taxes just because some mediator told me to."
Throughout the budget crisis, Lockyer warned that an impasse would increasingly raise the costs of short-and long-term state borrowing, ultimately as much as an additional $7.5 billion in interest over the next 30 years. On July 6, with no budget agreement yet concluded, Fitch Ratings downgraded California's bond rating to BBB, just one notch above the dividing line between investment grade and speculative grade "junk" bonds. A Lockyer spokesman estimated that this downgrade alone would represent an immediate "hit of hundreds of millions of dollars" in higher credit costs.
As California continued to issue IOUs to cover $350 million in short-term debt, the formal standing of California bonds continued to decline. Moody's joined Fitch in cutting the State's debt rating (though still three levels above "junk" status), because of "increasing" risk to debt service payments. And a London firm which tracks speculative "credit default swaps" ranked California ninth in the world among the 10 governmental entities most likely to default on their financial obligations. A Lockyer spokesman called this assessment "ludicrous", and Lockyer himself continued to insist, as he had done throughout the crisis, that the threat of default was "infinitesimally small... short of a thermonuclear war."
Two days later, on July 16, Lockyer stated, “I call on the Governor and Legislature to focus exclusively on what it takes to bring this year’s budget back in balance, honestly and immediately. I urge them to...quit adding or resurrecting endless ideological debating points, and to stop using budget negotiations to score points with political allies or against partisan opponents." He added that the state’s credit rating was moving "closer and closer to the junk pile... If our credit rating sinks to junk status, the state will find the door to the infrastructure bond market locked shut".
One Democratic insider stated that by this "tongue-lashing of legislative leaders", the "ever-blunt" Lockyer "didn't win...any friends in the Capitol".
Four days after Lockyer's remarks, the Governor and legislative leaders finally announced they had reached agreement on a complex budget plan which combined spending cuts with various accounting maneuvers.
A month later, Standard and Poor's removed California bonds from its "credit watch list", indicating that while the bonds still had a negative outlook, they were not "under threat of an imminent downgrade". Lockyer was optimistic about this "positive development...It reflects confidence that the budget solution adopted by the governor and legislature gets us on the right track...”
But then Lockyer, working behind the scenes, helped arrange a new partnership at the NUMMI plant between Toyota and Tesla Motors
, an electric car company, which he had assisted in the past through the Treasurer's "Green Wave" investment policies.
, and Phil Angelides
- had lost gubernatorial campaigns, and Democratic pundits considered the Treasurer's job a much "smaller bully pulpit" which did not provide a good spring-board to higher office.
Despite persistent rumors that Lockyer, who had earlier accumulated a $10 million political war chest, might be a "dark horse" possibility for Governor in 2010, he expressed no interest in mounting a campaign to succeed Schwarzenegger. When asked about the possibility, Lockyer stated that he saw no chance of winning a primary election battle with former Governor Jerry Brown
(his successor as Attorney General), who eventually emerged as the unchallenged Democratic nominee and went on to win the general election. Lockyer also said he preferred spending time with his family. "You kill yourself being a Governor", he joked, "and then maybe you get a new aqueduct named after you".
In an article probing Schwarzenegger's political unpopularity in his final months in office,
George Skelton, after quoting Lockyer's reflection on the fickle electorate ("Our state voters have very high expectations of what government can do. And their haste to criticize is very high") opined that Lockyer "might have been governor himself if he were more ambitious and photogenic, and sometimes less blunt".
Having faced no opposition in the Democratic Primary, Lockyer was re-elected for a final term as State Treasurer in the November 2010 Election, defeating a Republican State Senator from Orange County, and receiving more votes than any elected official in the United States. He was endorsed by the Sacramento Bee, Oakland Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, and the San Jose Mercury News, which concluded that "the Hayward Democrat has done well at a number of jobs over several decades, from the Legislature to attorney general. But as state treasurer for the past four years, he has really shone, maturing to near-statesman stature..."
Unable to run for a third term as Treasurer due to term limits
, Lockyer has expressed a tenttive interest in running for State Controller in 2014.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
politician
Politician
A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...
. He is the current 32nd State Treasurer
California State Treasurer
The California State Treasurer is responsible for the state's investment and finance. The post has more narrow responsibilities and authority than the California State Controller...
of California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, elected in 2006 and re-elected in 2010. He has also served as California Attorney General
California Attorney General
The California Attorney General is the State Attorney General of California. The officer's duty is to ensure that "the laws of the state are uniformly and adequately enforced" The Attorney General carries out the responsibilities of the office through the California Department of Justice.The...
and President Pro Tempore of the California State Senate
California State Senate
The California State Senate is the upper house of the California State Legislature. There are 40 state senators. The state legislature meets in the California State Capitol in Sacramento. The Lieutenant Governor is the ex officio President of the Senate and may break a tied vote...
. Having held elective office since 1973, Lockyer has arguably had more varied executive and legislative experience than any other current official of the State Government. Lockyer is unable to run for a third term in 2014 due to term limits
Term limits in the United States
Term limits in the United States apply to many offices at both the federal and state level, and date back to the American Revolution.-Pre-constitution:...
.
Described by journalistic observers as one of California's most "colorful" politicians, Lockyer has long been known to speak with a picturesque frankness that has occasionally caused political embarrassment.
Early life and career
Lockyer attended the University of California, BerkeleyUniversity of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, graduating with a BA in Political Science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
in 1965. While in school, Lockyer founded the Cal Berkeley Democrats. His first job was a public school history teacher.
Lockyer began his political career as a School Board member of the San Leandro Unified School District
San Leandro Unified School District
San Leandro Unified School District is a publicly funded unified school district in San Leandro, Alameda County, California. The District has 12 schools and 447 teachers, with a total enrollment of 8,729 students in kindergarten through 12th grade.-Staff:...
, as chair of the Alameda County Democratic Central Committee, and California coordinator of Senator George McGovern
George McGovern
George Stanley McGovern is an historian, author, and former U.S. Representative, U.S. Senator, and the Democratic Party nominee in the 1972 presidential election....
's 1972 campaign for the Presidency.
Personal life
Lockyer has been married since April 2003 to attorney Nadia Maria Davis, an Orange County native of Hispanic, Native American and European descent. He has been married twice before, has an adult daughter who is an attorney for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and a son born in 2003.Nadia Lockyer has been a public interest law attorney since 1997. She currently works as Executive Director of the Alameda County Family Justice Center. In January 2010, she was appointed to the California Community Colleges Board of Governors by Governor Schwarzenegger. She was elected to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors
Alameda County Board of Supervisors
The Alameda County Board of Supervisors is the five member non-partisan governing board of Alameda County, California. Members of the board of supervisors are elected by district based on their residence...
in the November 2010 election.
Legislative career
Lockyer first won a State Assembly seat in a Special Election of September 4, 1973, following the accidental death of the Bay Area Assemblyman Robert W. Crown who was his political mentor. He served in the Legislature for the next twenty-five years, more than half that time in the State Senate, where, in 1994, he was chosen by his peers to be President Pro Tem, the most powerful position of the upper legislative house.In his spare time, Lockyer attended law school classes in Sacramento and received a law degree from the McGeorge School of Law
McGeorge School of Law
University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law is a private, ABA approved law school in the Oak Park neighborhood of the city of Sacramento, California. It is part of the University of the Pacific....
, University of the Pacific.
Within the California Legislature, Lockyer was considered only mildly eccentric - a voracious reader with a yen for junk food and a lifelong aversion to green vegetables, a mercurial temperament he schooled himself to bring under control, and a wry sense of humor that won him close friends on both sides of the partisan aisle.
As a legislator, Lockyer was generally acknowledged to be a hard-working and masterful consensus-builder and negotiator. Long-time Speaker of the Assembly Willie Brown
Willie Brown (politician)
Willie Lewis Brown, Jr. is an American politician of the Democratic Party. He served over 30 years in the California State Assembly, spending 15 years as its Speaker, and afterward served as the 41st mayor of San Francisco, the first African American to do so...
stated in a 2009 interview that, by the time Lockyer left the Legislature in 1998, "Capitol insiders took his prolific effectiveness for granted."
Environmental protection legislation and the Bay Trail
As a freshman legislator in 1974, Lockyer wrote the first legislation to provide state funding for emergency oil spill decontamination. During his legislative career, he wrote other progressiveProgressivism
Progressivism is an umbrella term for a political ideology advocating or favoring social, political, and economic reform or changes. Progressivism is often viewed by some conservatives, constitutionalists, and libertarians to be in opposition to conservative or reactionary ideologies.The...
environmental laws, including the first state regulation of trucks hauling toxic substances on California roads and highways, which preceded federal policies adopted by the EPA. He was a close ally of environmental pressure groups like the Sierra Club
Sierra Club
The Sierra Club is the oldest, largest, and most influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States. It was founded on May 28, 1892, in San Francisco, California, by the conservationist and preservationist John Muir, who became its first president...
and the Planning and Conservation League, backing their candidates for appointment to the Coastal Commission and opposing Republican appointees to the Air Quality and Water Board whom he believed to be biased toward industrial de-regulation.
Lockyer considered his signature environmental achievement to be his 1987 bill to create a Bay Trail, which he envisioned as an eventual 500-mile-long hiking and cycling path, a continuous recreational corridor, with adjacent bayshore parks and protected natural habitats, that would entirely encircle San Francisco and San Pablo Bays. Requiring city, county and regional cooperation, the Bay Trail marked its 20th year in 2009 with 293 miles so far open to hikers, bicyclists, joggers and walkers.
1984 "hate crimes" legislation
In 1984, Lockyer sponsored the State's first "hate crimes" legislation which, as later amended, provided that "no person...shall by force or threat of force, willfully injure, intimidate, interfere with, oppress, or threaten any other person in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him or her by the Constitution or laws of this state or by the Constitution or laws of the United States because of the other person's race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, gender, or sexual orientation, or because he or she perceives that the other person has one or more of those characteristics." Later, as Attorney General, Lockyer was responsible for coordinating enforcement of this statute by local law enforcement.1987 tort reform "napkin deal"
On September 10, 1987, while Lockyer chaired the State Senate Judiciary Committee, he and Speaker of the Assembly Willie BrownWillie Brown (politician)
Willie Lewis Brown, Jr. is an American politician of the Democratic Party. He served over 30 years in the California State Assembly, spending 15 years as its Speaker, and afterward served as the 41st mayor of San Francisco, the first African American to do so...
met at a restaurant in Sacramento with representatives of bitterly competing special interests - insurance companies, trial lawyers, doctors and manufacturers - to formalize their agreement to "the most sweeping changes in California's civil liability laws in decades".
After many days of painstaking negotiations, these warring interests had accepted a compromise bill that included "a drastic restriction in product liability laws offset by fee increases for lawyers prosecuting medical malpractice cases. Doctors got promises that protections already in place against lawsuits would not be touched. Insurance companies won a reprieve from threatened regulations gaining momentum in the Legislature." This compromise had already been worked out; the dinner was meant to ratify a future "peace pact" among all the concerned parties to abide by the compromise.
Lockyer, who had acted as mediator during the earlier negotiations, scribbled the terms of the
"pact" on a restaurant cloth napkin, and so ended a political war. The compromise bill was then ramrodded through the Assembly and State Senate on the last night of that year's legislative session, and was signed into law by Republican Governor George Deukmejian
George Deukmejian
Courken George Deukmejian, Jr. born June 6, 1928) is an Armenian American politician from California who as a Republican served as the 35th Governor of California and as California Attorney General .-Early life:...
.
The "napkin deal" became legendary in the State Capitol - though the legend grew to mistakenly confuse the long negotiations with the final culinary act of peace-making. Proudly reproducing the original napkin on a poster titled "Tort-Mania 1987", Lockyer and Brown regarded the special interests compromise and conciliation they had arranged as a great legislative accomplishment. "The public is better served", Lockyer said at the time, "when these groups are trying to mend rather than tear the fabric of society".
1997-1998 "welfare reform" budget
Federal legislation signed by President ClintonBill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
in 1996 required California to enact “welfare-to-work” legislation to help welfare recipients move from government assistance to employment and “self-sufficiency”. The resulting establishment of a new CalWORKS (California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids) program had a major affect on the State budget, propelling difficult negotiations between the Democratic Legislature and conservative Republican Governor Pete Wilson
Pete Wilson
Peter Barton "Pete" Wilson is an American politician from California. Wilson, a Republican, served as the 36th Governor of California , the culmination of more than three decades in the public arena that included eight years as a United States Senator , eleven years as Mayor of San Diego and...
.
As Senate President Pro Tem, Lockyer was involved in these private negotiations, which, he later recalled to journalist Daniel Weintraub, produced the State's “last... old-fashioned balanced budget.”
1997 tax cut "mega-deal"
One month after the budget was passed and signed by the Governor, Lockyer was the key Democratic negotiator of a bi-partisan tax "mega-deal", a six-bill package that included a billion-dollar income-tax cut for middle class Californians by increasing the dependents credit over a three year-period.State Attorney General
Lockyer's predecessor as California Attorney General was a conservative, laissez faire Republican who considered the high point of his term in office to be passage of the "Three Strikes and You're Out" mandate.Lockyer felt his large staff of some 2000 attorneys, and the entire state Department of Justice, had to be radically restructured and reinvigorated - first, to modernize the relationship between the Attorney General and the California law enforcement community. Having grown up in the Berkeley 'Sixties atmosphere of anti-police rhetoric, he now found himself called the State's "Top Cop". Lockyer provided new technical support services for all of the State's 90,000 law enforcement officers, including those in neglected smaller departments. He also insisted on attending memorial services for every officer in the State who was killed in the line of duty.
At the same time, Lockyer steered the Justice Department to a new legal activism that reflected his liberal values in such areas of litigation and regulation as civil rights and anti-trust enforcement and consumer and environmental protection. He became one of the two most prominent state Attorney Generals in the nation, rivaled in media attention only by New York's Eliot Spitzer
Eliot Spitzer
Eliot Laurence Spitzer is an American lawyer, former Democratic Party politician, and political commentator. He was the co-host of In the Arena, a talk-show and punditry forum broadcast on CNN until CNN cancelled his show in July of 2011...
. The two men were personal rivals as well, once nearly coming to blows after "screaming expletives at each other" at a Los Angeles convention of the National Association of Attorneys General. That organization elected Lockyer its President in 2003. Lockyer was popular among the other AGs, and respected for his legal initiatives.
As Attorney General, Lockyer sometimes had to defend official positions he found personally objectionable, such as defending a state employee accused of sexual harassment; or, in 2004, asking the courts to invalidate San Francisco same-sex marriage licenses which conflicted with State law, though Lockyer personally supported gay marriage.
Sometimes the positions Lockyer defended matched his own, such as when he defended California's 1996 legalization of medical marijuana against federal attacks by the Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
Administration. Lockyer found this particularly satisfying as he had come to strongly support "compassionate use" of Marijuana after living through his mother's and younger sister's deaths from leukemia
Leukemia
Leukemia or leukaemia is a type of cancer of the blood or bone marrow characterized by an abnormal increase of immature white blood cells called "blasts". Leukemia is a broad term covering a spectrum of diseases...
.
Lockyer was unable to run for a third term in 2006 due to term limits
Term limits in the United States
Term limits in the United States apply to many offices at both the federal and state level, and date back to the American Revolution.-Pre-constitution:...
and was succeeded by Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown
Jerry Brown
Edmund Gerald "Jerry" Brown, Jr. is an American politician. Brown served as the 34th Governor of California , and is currently serving as the 39th California Governor...
.
Sex offenders, DNA testing, bullet coding
An avowed technophile, Lockyer found different quandaries while directing his Department to give new high technology support to law enforcement agencies.His predecessor had actively promoted legislation aimed at curbing sex crimes, notably California's version of "Megan's Law
Megan's Law
Megan's Law is an informal name for laws in the United States requiring law enforcement authorities to make information available to the public regarding registered sex offenders. Individual states decide what information will be made available and how it should be disseminated...
", which required authorities to make publicly available registration information provided to local Police by former child molesters, rapists and others sex offenders after being released from custody. But the public could only access this information about registered sex offenders living in their communities by visiting a Police station or calling a 900 toll-line number, until Lockyer sponsored legislation requiring the data to be posted on a public website. Less than 90 days after the bill was signed into law, the website was running, listing personal details about more than 60,000 past sex offenders, together with an interactive map that allowed users to search their neighborhoods. The website accessed by 27 million users in 18 months. However, it faced complaints that the information was outdated; that there were too many restrictions on use of the information by employers, landlords, schools and insurance agents, or, as the ACLU contended, too few restrictions to protect the civil liberties of those who had already paid their debt to society.
Similar problems followed from a bio-tech achievement of which Lockyer was especially proud - expansion of State Crime Lab facilities to process DNA genetic samples taken from convicted felons, aiming to create the largest state-run DNA criminal data-bank in the country. Law enforcement officials said this would be a boon to solving a growing backlog of often "cold" investigations of violent unsolved crimes. But the lab soon developed its own massive backlog, with tens of thousands of unprocessed and non-prioritized DNA samples languishing in refrigerators, still to be placed in the offender database. A voter-approved measure of 2004 that allowed police to gather DNA, not just from convicted violent criminals, but from anyone arrested, even without charge or conviction, for any felony, violent or otherwise, led Lockyer himself to express reservations. "I personally wouldn't have put arrests in the measure," he said, adding that he would also have made it simpler for innocent people to get their information removed from the files - a complaint of civil libertarians who raised the specter of innocent people being kept in the same database as convicted armed felons.
After a Seattle company unveiled a new technology for "coding" individual bullets, Lockyer sponsored the first legislation in the country which would have required all handgun (but not rifle) ammunition sold in California to be engraved with a unique serial identification number. "We are losing too many of our young people to seemingly random shootings and anonymous killers," said Lockyer. The bill "will strip criminals of their anonymity and give law enforcement evidence it can use to quickly and effectively solve more gun crimes." The National Rifle Association
National Rifle Association
The National Rifle Association of America is an American non-profit 501 civil rights organization which advocates for the protection of the Second Amendment of the United States Bill of Rights and the promotion of firearm ownership rights as well as marksmanship, firearm safety, and the protection...
and other gun rights groups - already at odds with Lockyer over enforcement of State prohibitions against semi-automatic rifles - strongly condemned the plan, saying criminals could easily obtain unmarked ammunition and that the whole process would create a costly enforcement bureaucracy. Manufacturers also opposed the measure as economically disastrous, since the engraving machines would cost up to half a million dollars each and would make virtually obsolete tens of millions of dollars in existing manufacturing equipment. The bill died in the Legislature.
2000-2001 California energy crisis
Of the many actions taken by Lockyer's staff against corporate fraud and malfeasance, the most prominent were related to the California Energy Crisis that began in the summer of 2000, marked by rolling blackouts, brownouts and the billions of dollars in price hikes that appeared on consumers' electrical bills.It later emerged that the "crisis" stemmed in part from illegal practices by energy corporations such as the now-defunct Enron
Enron
Enron Corporation was an American energy, commodities, and services company based in Houston, Texas. Before its bankruptcy on December 2, 2001, Enron employed approximately 22,000 staff and was one of the world's leading electricity, natural gas, communications, and pulp and paper companies, with...
. The exposure of these hidden offenses began in August 2000 when Lockyer created an Energy Task Force to launch the State's first investigation of alleged price gouging
Price gouging
Price gouging is a pejorative term referring to a situation in which a seller prices goods or commodities much higher than is considered reasonable or fair. In precise, legal usage, it is the name of a crime that applies in some of the United States during civil emergencies...
by power companies.
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
scoffed at million-dollar rewards offered by the Attorney General's office for information about illegal conduct by energy powers, dismissing the allegations as unsupported by clear evidence. But such probes eventually led to some five billion dollars in brokered settlements by Enron and a half dozen other corporations which admitted to "gaming" the State's deregulated energy system.
Enron and prison-rape remark controversy
As Attorney General, Lockyer was incensed by what he believed to be inequities in the legal system that allowed financial and corporate malefactors to escape punishment entirely, or at worst, to be incarcerated in minimum-security, "Club Fed" facilities.During the Enron scandal
Enron scandal
The Enron scandal, revealed in October 2001, eventually led to the bankruptcy of the Enron Corporation, an American energy company based in Houston, Texas, and the dissolution of Arthur Andersen, which was one of the five largest audit and accountancy partnerships in the world...
of 2001 which led to the then-largest corporate bankruptcy in American history, Lockyer achieved some notoriety for his public quip, "I would love to personally escort Ken Lay
Enron
Enron Corporation was an American energy, commodities, and services company based in Houston, Texas. Before its bankruptcy on December 2, 2001, Enron employed approximately 22,000 staff and was one of the world's leading electricity, natural gas, communications, and pulp and paper companies, with...
CEO Kenneth Lay
Kenneth Lay
Kenneth Lee "Ken" Lay was an American businessman, best known for his role in the widely reported corruption scandal that led to the downfall of Enron Corporation. Lay and Enron became synonymous with corporate abuse and accounting fraud when the scandal broke in 2001...
Tattoo
A tattoo is made by inserting indelible ink into the dermis layer of the skin to change the pigment. Tattoos on humans are a type of body modification, and tattoos on other animals are most commonly used for identification purposes...
ed dude
Dude
A dude is an individual, typically male. The female equivalent, which is used less often, is "dudette" or "dudess". However, "dude" has evolved to become more unisex to encompass all genders, and this was true even in the 1950s....
who says, 'Hi, my name is Spike, honey'". Intended to be an off-color comment on the impunity of white collar criminals, this remark was instead widely condemned as an endorsement of prison rape
Prison rape
Prison rape commonly refers to the rape of inmates in prison by other inmates or prison staff.In 2001, Human Rights Watch estimated that at least 140,000 inmates had been raped while incarcerated. and there is a significant variation in the rates of prison rape by race...
. Lockyer later apologized for the statement in a letter to the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
, saying, "My anger over the activities of energy barons doesn't come close to my lifelong outrage at the crime of rape. ... I guess I let my anger get the better of me..."
(Lay later died of a heart attack, before he could serve any time in prison.)
Auto industry global warming lawsuit
On September 20, 2006, Lockyer filed a lawsuit against what his office referred to as "the big six automakers" for their alleged contributions to global warmingGlobal warming
Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...
. Initial reaction was mixed, with some environmental groups being supportive, and an auto industry trade calling it a 'nuisance suit'. A similar suit in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
had been dismissed by a federal court.
The California suit was dismissed on September 17, 2007, with the court saying that "The adjudication of plaintiff's claim would require the court to balance the competing interests of reducing global warming emissions and the interests of advancing and preserving economic and industrial development."
Hewlett-Packard scandal
While Attorney General, in 2006, Lockyer and his staff conducted a criminal investigation into the Hewlett-PackardHewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...
pretexting scandal to ascertain whether or not the investigators authorized by Chairman Patricia C. Dunn
Patricia C. Dunn
Patricia Cecile Dunn , aka Patricia Cecile Dunn-Jahnke, is the former non-executive chairman of the board of Hewlett-Packard , a position she held from February 2005 until September 22, 2006, when she resigned her position. On October 4, 2006 Bill Lockyer, the California attorney general, charged...
to discover the source of leaks from within the company illegally obtained the phone records of HP board members and journalists. Charges were subsequently brought against Dunn, which were dismissed by the court in 2007.
Landmark legal cases
- Silveira v. LockyerSilveira v. LockyerSilveira v. Lockyer, 312 F.3d 1052 , is a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit holding that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution does not guarantee individuals the right to bear arms...
(Restrictions on semi-automatic firearms) - Lockyer v. AndradeLockyer v. AndradeLockyer v. Andrade, , decided the same day as Ewing v. California, held that there would be no relief by means of a petition for a writ of habeas corpus from a sentence imposed under California's three strikes law as a violation of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual...
("Three-strikes" criminal sentencing) - Lockyer v. City and County of San Francisco (Same-sex Marriage)
2003 gubernatorial recall election
An initiative to recall newly re-elected Governor Gray DavisGray Davis
Joseph Graham "Gray" Davis, Jr. is an American Democratic politician who served as California's 37th Governor from 1999 until being recalled in 2003...
qualified for the ballot in July 2003, with a special election, scheduled for October, to include both a referendum on the recall itself and a list of candidates vying to replace Davis if the recall succeeded. With some arm-twisting by US Senator Dianne Feinstein
Dianne Feinstein
Dianne Goldman Berman Feinstein is the senior U.S. Senator from California. A member of the Democratic Party, she has served in the Senate since 1992. She also served as 38th Mayor of San Francisco from 1978 to 1988....
, all the potential Democratic candidates, including Lockyer, agreed not to run, in the hope that this would strengthen Davis' campaign to defeat the recall.
At the start, it appeared that the strongest Republican candidate would be former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan
Richard Riordan
Richard J. Riordan is a Republican politician from California, U.S.A. who served as the California Secretary for Education from 2003–2005 and as the 39th Mayor of Los Angeles, California from 1993–2001...
, who had unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for Governor the previous year. Lockyer, at the start of August, publicly warned Davis and his political consultants against a repeat effort to sabotage Riordan's candidacy by negative attack ads: "If they do the trashy campaign on Dick Riordan ... I think there are going to be prominent Democrats that will defect and just say, 'We're tired of that puke politics. Don't you dare do it again or we're just going to help pull the plug.'"
Five days later, Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger is an Austrian-American former professional bodybuilder, actor, businessman, investor, and politician. Schwarzenegger served as the 38th Governor of California from 2003 until 2011....
announced that he would run as a Republican in the recall election. Lockyer and Schwarzenegger had been casual friends since Lockyer's State Senate years, when the actor had chaired the Governor's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, and the two men had together toured charter schools in southern California. Later, Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante
Cruz Bustamante
Cruz Miguel Bustamante is an American politician. He was the 45th Lieutenant Governor of California, a former Speaker of the State Assembly and a member of the Democratic Party...
announced he would become the only prominent Democrat to place his name on the recall ballot.
On October 7, by a decisive vote, Davis was recalled, and Schwarzenegger was elected to replace him. Two weeks later, at a UC Berkeley post-mortem conference of the election, Lockyer announced that while he had voted against the recall, he had also voted for Schwarzenegger. He explained that "Arnold represented... hope, change, reform, opportunity, upbeat problem solving".
Despite some support from San Francisco radio talk show personality Ronn Owens
Ronn Owens
Ronn Owens , is an American talk radio host. Owens is the top-rated talk radio host on KGO in San Francisco-Career:...
, who hailed Lockyer's "courage" and "independence", fellow Democrats and feminists reacted bitterly to Lockyer's surprise announcement.
2006 election
By a year into Schwarzenegger's governorship, Lockyer increasingly felt the governor's performance was disheartening, marked by inexperience, lack of strong political conviction, and personal braggadocio. In a 2005 interview, Lockyer criticized Schwarzenegger's leadership style as demonstrating an "arrogance of power" with the "odor of Austrian politics", alluding to the Austrian-born Governor's upbringing in a country with a "long history" of "elite...autocracy".Soon after the recall election, Lockyer began contemplating his own run for governor in the 2006 election. Inspired by discussions with futurist Peter Schwartz
Peter Schwartz
Peter Schwartz may refer to:* Peter Schwartz , writer and journalist* Peter Schwartz , futurist and co-founder of GBN-See also:* Peter Schwarz, German football player...
, he tried to lay the groundwork for a lofty, issues-oriented campaign.
In January 2005, while still Attorney General, Lockyer tentatively announced his candidacy for governor: "the one and only office that has held abiding interest for me since I left the Legislature... It's the job I want, not only because I think I'll be a great executive, but because I think that I can and will lead the best campaign you've ever seen, a winning Democratic campaign of ideas, ideals and inspiration to stake out a great future for California."
Lockyer changed his mind four months later, sensing a lack of interest among voters. In June 2005, Lockyer announced he would instead run for State Treasurer. He was elected to that office in November 2006.
Climate Change and Renewable Energy Finance Initiatives
As Treasurer (and ex officio trustee of CalPERSCalPERS
The California Public Employees' Retirement System or CalPERS is an agency in the California executive branch that "manages pension and health benefits for more than 1.6 million California public employees, retirees, and their families"...
and CalSTRS
CalSTRS
The California State Teachers' Retirement System provides retirement, disability and survivor benefits for California's 852,316 prekindergarten through community college educators and their families...
, the two largest public employee pension funds in the United States) Lockyer tried to use the influence of his office in the aid of various environmental causes. These attempts included:
- Expanding the "Green Wave" environmental initiative first proposed by Treasurer Phil Angelides in 2004 to a multi-billion dollar investment in renewable energy
- With statutory authority of the Treasurer's California Alternative Energy and Advanced Transportation Financing Authority (CAEATFA), exempting new "Zero Emission Vehicle" manufacturers, such as electric automobile startup Tesla Motors, from sales and use tax on the purchase of equipment used in California manufacturing.
- State purchase - the first by any governmental body in the US - of "Green Bonds" issued by the World Bank to finance Climate Change projects in developing countries
- Providing a $48 million loan guarantee program to help California truckers comply with new diesel emission regulations put into force by the California Air Resources Board
Based on such State programs, Lockyer also sponsored federal legislation (H.R.3525,“Private Activity Bonds for Clean Energy Projects”) introduced in July 2009 by California Congressman Mike Thompson
Mike Thompson
Michael C. Thompson , is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1999. He is a member of the Democratic Party. The district includes Napa, Lake, Mendocino, Humboldt and Del Norte Counties as well as parts of Yolo and Sonoma Counties....
to provide tax-exempt bond financing nationally for private sector Renewable Energy projects, Zero-emission vehicle purchases, and "green" manufacturing facilities.
2008–2009 California budget crisis
In the fall of 2008, with the economy faltering, the Legislature very belatedly passed what Los Angeles Times political columnist George SkeltonGeorge Skelton
George Alfred Skelton was a former professional footballer who played as a midfielder for Huddersfield Town & Leyton Orient....
called "another atrocious, short-sighted, gimmicky budget that set a record for procrastination" and "wreaked havoc all across California among small business vendors, healthcare centers and nursing homes that couldn't be paid by the state until a budget was enacted."
Lockyer was also critical of the budget, describing its budgetary provisions to Skelton as "banana republic financing", based on accounting gimmicks (that "give gimmicks a bad name"), "phony inflated estimates of revenue" and a "boondoggle" of "massive" corporate tax breaks at a time of mounting State deficit.
In 2009, it was discovered that the state faced a $25 billion deficit, following a sharp drop in tax revenues.
As negotiations began to revise the state budget, Lockyer tried to convince U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to provide a guarantee for state bond payments. "A fiscal meltdown by California ... would surely destabilize the U.S., if not worldwide financial markets," Lockyer wrote to Geithner on May 13. The Obama Administration declined the request.
Earlier, Lockyer warned the legislative conference committee that private lenders would be leery of any more "smoke-and-mirrors accounting tricks" and that lawmakers would have to rely heavily on spending cuts to balance the budget: "It seems to me that the kind of budget we will require before the end of June is almost entirely cuts...My suggestion to you is don't delay the pain. It's going to be awful, but just get it done. It's going to be worse if it doesn't get done."
Lockyer was also quoted as telling Democratic legislators that, "fair or not", angry voters blamed them for "12 years of flowing red ink". "Why don't you start with the realization that probably none of you are going to be back here next year?", after the 2010 elections. "You're not going to get reelected. Just put the politics out of your brain...That's a very liberating thought, and with it you can get a lot done."
When the Legislature failed to pass a balanced budget before the start of the new fiscal year on July 1, 2009, State Controller John Chiang began issuing IOUs to some state creditors. Lockyer suggested having a respected intermediary mediate between the Republican Governor and the Democratic-controlled Legislature. Republican State Senator Bob Huff
Bob Huff
Robert S. Huff is a U.S. politician, who is a Republican member of the California State Senate, representing the 29th Senate District, which includes portions of Los Angeles, Orange, and San Bernardino counties...
scoffed at the idea, saying, "No caucus is going to go with that... I'm not going to vote for new taxes just because some mediator told me to."
Throughout the budget crisis, Lockyer warned that an impasse would increasingly raise the costs of short-and long-term state borrowing, ultimately as much as an additional $7.5 billion in interest over the next 30 years. On July 6, with no budget agreement yet concluded, Fitch Ratings downgraded California's bond rating to BBB, just one notch above the dividing line between investment grade and speculative grade "junk" bonds. A Lockyer spokesman estimated that this downgrade alone would represent an immediate "hit of hundreds of millions of dollars" in higher credit costs.
As California continued to issue IOUs to cover $350 million in short-term debt, the formal standing of California bonds continued to decline. Moody's joined Fitch in cutting the State's debt rating (though still three levels above "junk" status), because of "increasing" risk to debt service payments. And a London firm which tracks speculative "credit default swaps" ranked California ninth in the world among the 10 governmental entities most likely to default on their financial obligations. A Lockyer spokesman called this assessment "ludicrous", and Lockyer himself continued to insist, as he had done throughout the crisis, that the threat of default was "infinitesimally small... short of a thermonuclear war."
Two days later, on July 16, Lockyer stated, “I call on the Governor and Legislature to focus exclusively on what it takes to bring this year’s budget back in balance, honestly and immediately. I urge them to...quit adding or resurrecting endless ideological debating points, and to stop using budget negotiations to score points with political allies or against partisan opponents." He added that the state’s credit rating was moving "closer and closer to the junk pile... If our credit rating sinks to junk status, the state will find the door to the infrastructure bond market locked shut".
One Democratic insider stated that by this "tongue-lashing of legislative leaders", the "ever-blunt" Lockyer "didn't win...any friends in the Capitol".
Four days after Lockyer's remarks, the Governor and legislative leaders finally announced they had reached agreement on a complex budget plan which combined spending cuts with various accounting maneuvers.
A month later, Standard and Poor's removed California bonds from its "credit watch list", indicating that while the bonds still had a negative outlook, they were not "under threat of an imminent downgrade". Lockyer was optimistic about this "positive development...It reflects confidence that the budget solution adopted by the governor and legislature gets us on the right track...”
2010 Tesla, Toyota and NUMMI Electric Auto Partnership
When the Toyota corporation announced it would close the NUMMI auto plant in Fremont, California, after its long-time partner in the facility, General Motors, pulled out of the partnership, Lockyer appointed a blue-ribbon commission that publicized the adverse economic consequences of plant closure and the unemployment of several thousand workers, and pleaded with Toyota to reconsider. The company refused.But then Lockyer, working behind the scenes, helped arrange a new partnership at the NUMMI plant between Toyota and Tesla Motors
Tesla Motors
Tesla Motors, Inc. is a Silicon Valley-based company that designs, manufactures and sells electric cars and electric vehicle powertrain components. It was the only automaker building and selling a zero-emission sports car, the Tesla Roadster, in serial production...
, an electric car company, which he had assisted in the past through the Treasurer's "Green Wave" investment policies.
2010 gubernatorial election
Three of Lockyer's predecessors as State Treasurer - Jesse Unruh, Kathleen BrownKathleen Brown
Kathleen Lynn Brown is a Democratic politician from California. She is the youngest of four children of former Governor Edmund G. "Pat" Brown and is the sister of current California Governor Edmund G. "Jerry" Brown, Jr...
, and Phil Angelides
Phil Angelides
Philip Nicholas "Phil" Angelides is an American politician who was California State Treasurer and the unsuccessful Democratic nominee for Governor of California in the 2006 elections...
- had lost gubernatorial campaigns, and Democratic pundits considered the Treasurer's job a much "smaller bully pulpit" which did not provide a good spring-board to higher office.
Despite persistent rumors that Lockyer, who had earlier accumulated a $10 million political war chest, might be a "dark horse" possibility for Governor in 2010, he expressed no interest in mounting a campaign to succeed Schwarzenegger. When asked about the possibility, Lockyer stated that he saw no chance of winning a primary election battle with former Governor Jerry Brown
Jerry Brown
Edmund Gerald "Jerry" Brown, Jr. is an American politician. Brown served as the 34th Governor of California , and is currently serving as the 39th California Governor...
(his successor as Attorney General), who eventually emerged as the unchallenged Democratic nominee and went on to win the general election. Lockyer also said he preferred spending time with his family. "You kill yourself being a Governor", he joked, "and then maybe you get a new aqueduct named after you".
In an article probing Schwarzenegger's political unpopularity in his final months in office,
George Skelton, after quoting Lockyer's reflection on the fickle electorate ("Our state voters have very high expectations of what government can do. And their haste to criticize is very high") opined that Lockyer "might have been governor himself if he were more ambitious and photogenic, and sometimes less blunt".
Having faced no opposition in the Democratic Primary, Lockyer was re-elected for a final term as State Treasurer in the November 2010 Election, defeating a Republican State Senator from Orange County, and receiving more votes than any elected official in the United States. He was endorsed by the Sacramento Bee, Oakland Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, and the San Jose Mercury News, which concluded that "the Hayward Democrat has done well at a number of jobs over several decades, from the Legislature to attorney general. But as state treasurer for the past four years, he has really shone, maturing to near-statesman stature..."
Unable to run for a third term as Treasurer due to term limits
Term limits in the United States
Term limits in the United States apply to many offices at both the federal and state level, and date back to the American Revolution.-Pre-constitution:...
, Lockyer has expressed a tenttive interest in running for State Controller in 2014.
External links
- California State Treasurer Bill Lockyer Official state site
- Bill Lockyer for State Treasurer Official campaign site
- Follow the Money - Bill Lockyer 2006 campaign contributions