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Byron Sher, an attorney and Stanford law professor who had spent nearly two decades in Palo Alto politics before he moved on to Sacramento and established himself as one of California’s leading environmental champions, died on Saturday, according to his family. He was 98.
A native of St. Louis, Missouri, Sher attended Washington University and received a law degree from Harvard Law School before moving to Palo Alto in 1957. He joined the Stanford Law School faculty, where he taught contracts, commercial law, consumer protection and legislation, according to his son, Benjamin Sher.
He became civically active during in the late 1950s, as the city was debating the construction of Oregon Expressway, a divisive battle that inspired his council run several years later. Proponents of the county proposal to replace the two-lane Oregon Avenue with a four-lane expressway ultimately won by a razor-thin margin in a 1962 election, paving the way for the modern county road.
Aided by his wife and chief campaign assistant, Linda Sher, he joined the City Council in 1965 and was one of the city’s original “residentalists,” residents who supported environmental protection and slow-growth policies. Along with fellow residentialists, a list that included Enid Pearson and Kirke Comstock, Sher faced a bitter recall election in 1967, when the entire council was up for election. Despite losing the recall, Sher made a political comeback six years later.
He rejoined the council and served from 1973 to 1980, including terms as mayor in 1975 and 1978. Despite the comeback, the council remained split between its pro-development and residentialist factions, and it took 37 ballots for him to get selected as mayor the first time he was nominated for the position, according to this publication’s previous coverage.
As a council member, he focused on sustainability and protection of open spaces, helping to negotiate a 1975 settlement that resulted in the city buying more than 500 acres in the foothills for $7.5 million, according to this publications’ past reporting. The area now includes the Enid Pearson Arastradero Preserve.
“It was the best purchase the city ever made,” Sher told The Almanac, the Weekly’s sister publication, in 2004, as he concluded his career in the state Senate.
He also worked on the city’s first Comprehensive Plan, which was completed in 1976, and which set the foundation for local zoning laws. By that time, many of the ideals that Sher had been fighting for had become more mainstream. The first Earth Day was held in 1970 and later that year California Gov. Ronald Reagan signed the California Environmental Quality Act, which required cities and developers to mitigate the environmental impacts of new developments.
“Because of the particularities of Stanford, the Peninsula and the Bay Area, it was easy to be an environmentalist from a political standpoint because there was broad bipartisan support,” Benjamin Sher said. “Whether you’re Republican or Democrat, you supported environmental regulations. It was very natural for him to fall into that role because it just blended in.”
Byron Sher continued to focus on environmental protection in Sacramento, where he had spent more than two decades. He joined the state Assembly in 1980 and then won a special election to the state Senate in 1996. Before getting termed out after 24 years in the state Capital, Sher chaired the Natural Resources Committee in the Assembly and later the Environmental Quality Committee in the Senate.
His list of legislative accomplishments include landmark statutes such as the California Clean Air Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act. He also spearheaded the Integrated Waste Management Act, which governed garage and recycling, and passed a law that required double containers for fuel tanks and pipes.
“He had the vision, he did the work and he worked well with his leadership to make sure that when he needed heir help, he would be there,” said Joe Simitian, who served in the state Assembly when Sher was in the Senate and who partnered with him on renewable energy bills. “I thought that was a model worth emulating.”
Simitian was a college student when he met Sher in 1973. He was writing a term paper about the 1967 recall and Sher had agreed to talk to him about that painful experience. Simitian, who similarly served as Palo Alto mayor before moving on to the state Assembly and state Senate, called Sher’s post-recall election an apt redemption story for a local leader who was ahead of his time.
“Essentially, he paid the price for being a premature environmentalist, a premature residentialist,” Simitian said.
Sher often played a “key but quiet” role in major legislative efforts and in political debates, Simitian said. He also played the long game. Because term limits didn’t exist when he began his Sacramento stint, he was able to work on certain environmental issues for more than two decades, which is not something legislators can do today, Simitian said.
“He had the commitment and the patience and the persistence to just keep it on the agenda for a quarter of a century,” Simitian said.
In a 2004 proclamation, the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors recognized Sher’s decades of public service by designating Jan. 30 as “Byron Sher Day.” The proclamation called him “arguably the most effective environmental legislator in the state.”
After leaving Palo Alto, Sher and his family moved to the Sierra Nevada foothills, where he managed a pear orchard in Placerville. On one notable harvest in the mid-2000s, the lawyer and academic was able to deliver 500 tons of Bosc and Bartlett pears in a single harvest.
“He became a kind of a hobbyist farmer,” Benjamin Sher said.
Even then, he remained involved in environmental policy, serving on the Sierra Nevada Conservancy Board and the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency.
Sher is survived by his children, Adrienne, Benjamim and Katherine Sher, grandchildren Sarah Burke, Edek Sher, Nathaniel Sher, Dinah Sher Gongora, and Noe Gongora; and great-granddaughter Echo Marie Moncrieff.
In lieu of flowers, his family requests that memorial contributions be sent to the International Rescue Committee (www.rescue.org).
