Jackie Speier revs up lieutenant governor's job Jackie Speier revs up lieutenant governor's job (June 15, 2005)

By Andrea Gemmet

Almanac Staff Writer

While state Sen. Jackie Speier jokes that a big part of the job of lieutenant governor is to regularly check the pulse of the governor, she doesn't believe that the office is unimportant.

Sen. Speier, who spoke at a June 9 get-together at the Atherton home of Vivian Kral, said she is often asked why she isn't running for governor, rather than lieutenant governor, in 2006.

"I refer to the $14 million men as a big obstacle," she told the Almanac, referring to the sizeable gubernatorial campaign war chests already compiled by two fellow Democrats -- Atherton resident Steve Westly, the state controller, and state Treasurer Phil Angelides.

Sen. Speier, whose district includes Portola Valley and Woodside, made clear that she doesn't view being lieutenant governor as taking a mere understudy's role for the state's highest office.

Besides serving as acting governor whenever the governor is out of the state or incapacitated, the lieutenant governor is the president of the state Senate and serves as a regent of the University of California system and a trustee of the California State University system.

Next year, she said, she plans to carry a bill that would put the lieutenant governor on the state's community college board, as well.

"As lieutenant governor, I'm going to become the guardian of higher education," she said. "There's nothing more important for the state of California than to educate its young people. Everything else is irrelevant in this new century."

California's public education system is in trouble, she said, citing some oft-quoted statistics -- the high school graduation rate is one of the lowest in the nation, and the test scores of students from kindergarten through 12th grade rank 48th out of the 50 states.

The number of inmates in the state prison system is comparable to the number of students in the University of California, she said, and the state spends three times as much on its 165,000 inmates as it does on its 160,000 university students.

Graduate student tuitions have gone up 300 percent and the starting professor's salary is $10,000 less than the average prison guard salary, making it harder for the UC system to attract and retain talented people, she said.

"We're losing a treasure," Sen. Speier said.

Sen. Speier said she would use her role as president of the state Senate to tackle thorny issues that no one else wants to touch. Just because it's typically a ceremonial position doesn't mean that she would treat it that way, she said.

She used the state's powerful prison guards' union as an example, saying that the state prison system is in terrible shape largely because the prison guards' union has been calling the shots for far too long.

"Everywhere I've gone in my legislative life, I've turned that office into something far more effective," Sen. Speier said.

Sen. Speier, D-Hillsborough, was elected to the state Senate in 1998, and served in the state Assembly from 1986 to 1996.

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