Fred Keeley
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| Fred Keeley | |
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California State Assemblyman
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| In office 1996 – 2002 |
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| Constituency | 27th Assembly District |
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| Born | May 9, 1950 Sacramento, California, USA |
Fred Keeley (born May 9, 1950) is a politician in California, USA.
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[edit] Early life and career
He was born in Sacramento, California. He is the second son of Harry and Elizabeth Keeley. He was raised in the South San Francisco Bay area city of San Jose. He attended and graduated from Cupertino High School in 1969. In 1974, Keeley graduated with honors from San Jose State University, School of Social Sciences.
After working for Law Enforcement Training and Research Associates, he was selected by Santa Cruz County Supervisor Joe Cucchaira to be Cucchaira's policy director. Keeley served in that capacity until March of 1984 when then-Assembly Member Sam Farr (D-Carmel) hired Keeley to be his Chief of Staff. Keeley served in that capacity for nearly five years.
[edit] California State Assembly Election
In 1996, Keeley was nominated by the voters of the Democratic Party in the 27th Assembly District to serve in the California State Assembly. Keeley was elected to that position in the 1996 General Election. [[1]]
[edit] Assembly Career
During his first term in the Assembly, Keeley chaired the Budget Subcommittee on Resources, where he advanced legislation, known as the Marine Life Management Act of 1998. [[2]]
Also in 1998, Keeley was selected by Assembly Speaker Antonio Villariagosa to be Speaker pro Tempore of the [[3]]. This is the highest ranking member of the Speaker's leadership team, and, as such, Keeley was responsible for the development of the majority party's important policy initiatives. Keeley also investigated the wrong-doings of then-Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush. As a result of the investigation, Quackenbush resigned his office.
Duing this time, Keeley also authored the two largest park and environmental protection bonds in the nation's history, Proposition 12 on the California ballot in March of 2000, and Proposition 40 on the California ballot in March of 2002 [[4]]. Together, these voter-approved bonds provided $4.7 billion for environmental protection, park land and other valuable habitat land acquisition throughout the nation's most populated state. [[5]]
In late 2000, and early 2001, the California electricity crisis manifested itself with rolling black outs in many parts of the state. While electricity was seemingly a scarce product, the price of natural gas was skyrocketing. This dual shock to the energy sector of the economy of California caused a major political, policy, and practical upheaval. While many were claiming that the electricity shortage was the result of California's strong environmental regulation, which, the argument goes, caused a shortage of power plants being built in a timely fashion to match California's tremendous growth (500,000 people per annum); others argued that the state's experiment with "electricity deregulation" in the latter years of the Pete Wilson administration was the cause. Regardless of the acutal cause, it was essential that the state government move quickly into action to get the situation under control. [[6]]
It was at this time that Assembly Speaker Robert Miles Hertzberg appointed Keeley, his Speaker pro Tempore, as "chief operating officer" for the Assembly on the energy crisis. [[7]] This position had three primary duties: to establish a triage system for dealing with day-to-day, minute-to-minute emergencies that were direct outgrowths of the lack of electricity; to form a policy group, both at the staff and legislator level, to sort out those ideas that were being advanced to solve the problem, and make recommendations to the Speaker and the Governor, on how to tackle the many fronts on which this crisis was expanding; and to be the author of the agreed-upon package of legislation that would try to tame the energy crisis monster.
During the energy crisis, a variety of options were under consideration. The State of California was pleading with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to cap the wholesale price of electricity, as that price was far exceeding the statutory limit that regulated utilities in California could charge their retail customers. The wholesale price was far in excess of the retail price. That condition came about because of the deregulation of the electricity segment of the energy sector in California. When the legislature deregulated the electricity sector in 1996, at the behest of then-Governor Wilson, it did so by taking a number of statutory actions. One was to create a Power Exchange or PX. This was intended to be the trading floor for buyers and sellers of electricity. Keeley believed that the model was seriously flawed because it assumed that electricity could be treated as a commodity. Commodities markets have several features: Many buyers, many sellers, transparent transactions, substitute products, and the ability of the buyer to withhold buying if the price is not to his or her liking. According to Keeley, the PX had none of these features. [[8]]
Adding to the difficulties of the situation, the deregulation called for the Investor Owned Utilities, or IOUs, (primarily Pacific Gas and Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas and Electric) to sell off a significant part of their power generation. The buyers of those power plants then became the wholesalers to whom the IOU's needed to go to buy the electricity that they used to own. Because the federal government retains all jurisdiction over the pricing and movement of electricity on an interstate basis, and because the federal government then and now shows virtually no interest in controlling wholesale prices, the new power plant owners could literally charge the IOU's whatever they wanted to charge them for the nearly one third of the electricity the IOU's needed to buy in order to meet customer demand. Thus, a product that the IOU's used to produce for about three cents per kilowatt hour of electricity, they were paying eleven cents, twenty cents, fifty cents or more; and, yet, they were capped at 6.7 cents per kilowatt hours in terms of what they could charge their retail customers. As a result, PG&E filed bankruptcy, and Southern California Edison worked diligently on a workout plan with the State of California to save their company from the same fate. [[9]]
In order to stabilize prices, and to assure a reliable supply of electricity, Keeley became the author of the State of California's solution. That was for the State of California to become a market participant, and to buy the so-called net short position each day, and to sell that electricity to utility customers. While there was much criticism of the strategy at the time, it is clear that it had the desired effect: to wit, it stabilized prices and assured supply. PG&E's solution included the transfer of watershed lands and the creation of a youth stewardship program. [[10]]
After the energy crisis, the State of California faced a massive budget deficit. Keeley participated in forming a compromise on the State Budget. After months of work, the budet was adopted with the necessary votes of both Democrats and Republicans.
Due to term limits, Keeley left the Assembly in December of 2002. Then-Governor Gray Davis asked Keeley to join his administration as Director of the Department of Finance. Keeley declined, and instead became Executive Director of the Planning and Conservation League and the PCL Foundation. [[11]] These two non-profit organizations specialize in environmental research and legislative advocacy. Keeley led these two organizations for two years.
[edit] Later career
When Keeley was termed out of the legislature, the University of California, Santa Cruz established a perpetual environmental lecture series in his honor, known as the Fred Keeley Lectures on the Environment. The initial lecture was given by former Arizona Governor and former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt. In 2005, the lecture was given by Dr. Paul Erlich of Stanford University, and author of the best selling book The Population Bomb. Keeley also made a planned gift of $250,000 to UCSC to support the campus's STEPS Institute for Innovation in Environmental Research. [[12]]
In January 2005, Keeley returned to Santa Cruz and became Santa Cruz County Treasurer. While this position is a countywide elected position, Keeley was appointed by the Board of Supervisors to fill an unexpired term. On June 6, 2006, Keeley was elected to a four-year term as Treasurer.
In addition to his work as Treasurer, Keeley is a Member of the Board of Directors of the California League of Conservation Voters, the state's premiere environmental political action organization. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Planned Parenthood Advocates for California and Nevada.
Keeley was asked in 2006 by the Chair of the Political Science Department of San Jose State University to teach Political Science 102, Contemporary State Politics. Keeley is a frequent lecturer on California State government, politics, and a variety of environmental topics at Stanford University, the University of California at Santa Cruz, Duke University, San Jose State University, California State University at Monterey Bay, the University of Southern California, the and University of California, Berkeley.
Keeley is co-chair of the Voices of Reform Project of the Commonwealth Club of California. This project is focused on five major areas of governmental reform: Redistricting, Term Limits, Campaign Finance, Budget, and Initiative Reform. The other co-chair is Dan Shnur, former-Governor Pete Wilson's communications director. The Voices of Reform Project includes some three hundred civic leaders from throughout the State of California.
[edit] Awards
- Legislator of the Year for the 2001-2002 Session of the California Legislature, by the California Journal.
During his first term in the Assembly, Keeley chaired the Budget Subcommittee on Resources, where he advanced legislation, known as the Marine Life Management Act of 1998.
Also in 1998, Keeley was selected by Assembly Speaker Antonio Villariagosa to be Speaker pro Tempore of the California State Assembly. This is the highest ranking member of the Speaker's leadership team, and, as such, Keeley was responsible for the development of the majority party's important policy initiatives. (See Clerk of the Assembly, Statutes of 1998) Keeley also investigated the wrong-doings of then-Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush. As a result of the investigation, Quackenbush resigned his office.
Duing this time, Keeley also authored the two largest park and environmental protection bonds in the nation's history, Proposition 12 on the California ballot in March of 2000, and Proposition 40 on the California ballot in March of 2002 [1]
