Dan Morain: Governor is quietly making an impact with his appointments
By Dan Morain, Senior editor
The Sacramento Bee
The Sacramento Bee
Published: Sunday, Aug. 14, 2011 - 12:00 am | Page 1E
© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.
One by one, Gov. Jerry Brown is making statements with his appointees, but not like in the old days.
Brown used to go out of his way to tweak what he saw as calcified institutions. This time around, he is far more temperate – some say slow – befitting a guy who is 73.
"I know more at 73 than I knew at 37," he is fond of saying.
Back when he was in his 30s, Brown installed a lawyer with no judicial experience as Supreme Court chief justice, farmworkers' advocates to oversee agricultural practices, and a CalTrans chief who annoyed commuters by turning fast lanes on clogged urban arteries over to carpoolers.
This time around, he is seeking appointees who will do their jobs without excess drama. He's also following his old pattern by paddling the canoe, as he used to say, a little to the left and a little to the right, only this time, he is not going nearly so far left.
Rather than picking a high-profile environmentalist to head the California Environmental Protection Agency, he installed a career attorney from the California Department of Justice. He passed over a Humboldt County environmentalist and Coastal Act advocate for the California Coastal Commission, after a developer mounted a nasty campaign against the potential appointee.
This is not to say his appointees are duds. Eight months into his administration, many are arriving with strong pedigrees. In more than one instance, Brown's appointees have taken up issues that President Barack Obama has not.
One of Brown's California Public Utilities Commission members, Catherine J.K. Sandoval, convened first-in-the-nation hearings focusing on the proposed merger of AT&T and T-Mobile into a giant that would have a corner on 47 percent of the California wireless telephone market.
Sandoval is a Yale-, Stanford- and Oxford University-educated attorney who worked at the Federal Communications Commission and taught mass communications and antitrust law at Santa Clara University law school.
The FCC has yet to convene hearings into the merger. Sandoval, by contrast, is "asking very tough and data-driven questions" of the telecommunications giant, notes Susan Crawford, a professor at Benjamin Cardozo School of Law in New York who testified at one those hearings.
"As a political matter, the CPUC is shining a bright and very public light on AT&T's practices in California, which bolsters the federal-level case to block the merger," Crawford said.
Another Brown appointee is Ann Ravel, chair of the Fair Political Practices Commission, an agency Brown created by an initiative he sponsored when he was secretary of state.
Ravel arrived in Sacramento after serving a year and a half as a high-ranking official in the civil division of the U.S. Justice Department. Before that, she was Santa Clara County counsel.
Over coffee last week, Ravel talked about the frustrations of working in Washington and of being unable to tackle major issues because of bureaucratic timidity and political realities.
At the FPPC, she intends to aim high. She has directed investigators' attention away from infractions involving $10 and $50 matters, and is urging them to focus on large investigations into serious wrongdoing.
"Whatever we do, I want it to be meaningful," Ravel said.
Ravel, who didn't know Brown before he interviewed her for the job, recalled that in the job interview, Brown talked about how conflict of interest rules based on how the Political Reform Act was interpreted hampered his effort to redevelop Oakland's city center when he was Oakland mayor and had a downtown loft. She hopes to eliminate some unnecessary regulations.
She also said her "primary area" will be to make politics more transparent, and promises to expand disclosure of donations to judicial candidates, to independent campaigns, and perhaps to nonprofit corporations that engage in political activity.
She's also defending the Political Reform Act against a suit brought by Indiana attorney James Bopp. Often operating on behalf of anti-abortion organizations and groups that oppose same-sex marriage, Bopp is the architect of a national strategy to attack campaign finance restrictions and, in some instances, disclosure of certain types of campaign donations.
Bopp seeks to prevent disclosure of donors who gave to Proposition 8, the 2008 initiative that banned same-sex marriage. Some of the initiative's foes tried to intimidate donors to Proposition 8 by publishing their names and addresses.
"There are people in our country who want to win political debates by attacking their opponents," Bopp said by phone. "They are utterly intolerant of dissent and think they are justified therefore in punishing their opponents."
Ravel believes the case has broad implications and that Bopp sees it as "the beginning of his attack on disclosure" laws nationally.
A California governor has roughly 3,000 appointments. Brown has appointed 338 so far. Some critics grumble at his pace. He hasn't appointed a Caltrans director or secretary of Business, Housing and Transportation. Arnold Schwarzenegger holdovers remain in many posts.
But for posts that he views as especially important, Brown has brought back trusted lieutenants from his first stint as governor, and, as with Ravel and Sandoval, tapped individuals with long experience.
By appointing adults, Brown can dwell on tasks at hand, most importantly trying to get California's fiscal house in order. For now, he is less interested in rattling the establishment with his appointments, and much more focused on trying to restore a little order.
"I know more at 73 than I knew at 37," he is fond of saying.
Back when he was in his 30s, Brown installed a lawyer with no judicial experience as Supreme Court chief justice, farmworkers' advocates to oversee agricultural practices, and a CalTrans chief who annoyed commuters by turning fast lanes on clogged urban arteries over to carpoolers.
This time around, he is seeking appointees who will do their jobs without excess drama. He's also following his old pattern by paddling the canoe, as he used to say, a little to the left and a little to the right, only this time, he is not going nearly so far left.
Rather than picking a high-profile environmentalist to head the California Environmental Protection Agency, he installed a career attorney from the California Department of Justice. He passed over a Humboldt County environmentalist and Coastal Act advocate for the California Coastal Commission, after a developer mounted a nasty campaign against the potential appointee.
This is not to say his appointees are duds. Eight months into his administration, many are arriving with strong pedigrees. In more than one instance, Brown's appointees have taken up issues that President Barack Obama has not.
One of Brown's California Public Utilities Commission members, Catherine J.K. Sandoval, convened first-in-the-nation hearings focusing on the proposed merger of AT&T and T-Mobile into a giant that would have a corner on 47 percent of the California wireless telephone market.
Sandoval is a Yale-, Stanford- and Oxford University-educated attorney who worked at the Federal Communications Commission and taught mass communications and antitrust law at Santa Clara University law school.
The FCC has yet to convene hearings into the merger. Sandoval, by contrast, is "asking very tough and data-driven questions" of the telecommunications giant, notes Susan Crawford, a professor at Benjamin Cardozo School of Law in New York who testified at one those hearings.
"As a political matter, the CPUC is shining a bright and very public light on AT&T's practices in California, which bolsters the federal-level case to block the merger," Crawford said.
Another Brown appointee is Ann Ravel, chair of the Fair Political Practices Commission, an agency Brown created by an initiative he sponsored when he was secretary of state.
Ravel arrived in Sacramento after serving a year and a half as a high-ranking official in the civil division of the U.S. Justice Department. Before that, she was Santa Clara County counsel.
Over coffee last week, Ravel talked about the frustrations of working in Washington and of being unable to tackle major issues because of bureaucratic timidity and political realities.
At the FPPC, she intends to aim high. She has directed investigators' attention away from infractions involving $10 and $50 matters, and is urging them to focus on large investigations into serious wrongdoing.
"Whatever we do, I want it to be meaningful," Ravel said.
Ravel, who didn't know Brown before he interviewed her for the job, recalled that in the job interview, Brown talked about how conflict of interest rules based on how the Political Reform Act was interpreted hampered his effort to redevelop Oakland's city center when he was Oakland mayor and had a downtown loft. She hopes to eliminate some unnecessary regulations.
She also said her "primary area" will be to make politics more transparent, and promises to expand disclosure of donations to judicial candidates, to independent campaigns, and perhaps to nonprofit corporations that engage in political activity.
She's also defending the Political Reform Act against a suit brought by Indiana attorney James Bopp. Often operating on behalf of anti-abortion organizations and groups that oppose same-sex marriage, Bopp is the architect of a national strategy to attack campaign finance restrictions and, in some instances, disclosure of certain types of campaign donations.
Bopp seeks to prevent disclosure of donors who gave to Proposition 8, the 2008 initiative that banned same-sex marriage. Some of the initiative's foes tried to intimidate donors to Proposition 8 by publishing their names and addresses.
"There are people in our country who want to win political debates by attacking their opponents," Bopp said by phone. "They are utterly intolerant of dissent and think they are justified therefore in punishing their opponents."
Ravel believes the case has broad implications and that Bopp sees it as "the beginning of his attack on disclosure" laws nationally.
A California governor has roughly 3,000 appointments. Brown has appointed 338 so far. Some critics grumble at his pace. He hasn't appointed a Caltrans director or secretary of Business, Housing and Transportation. Arnold Schwarzenegger holdovers remain in many posts.
But for posts that he views as especially important, Brown has brought back trusted lieutenants from his first stint as governor, and, as with Ravel and Sandoval, tapped individuals with long experience.
By appointing adults, Brown can dwell on tasks at hand, most importantly trying to get California's fiscal house in order. For now, he is less interested in rattling the establishment with his appointments, and much more focused on trying to restore a little order.
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