David Crane | |
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Born | Denver, Colorado, U.S. | December 24, 1953
Alma mater | University of Michigan, Ann Arbor University of California, Hastings |
Political party | Democratic |
David Crane is a lecturer in public policy at Stanford University [1] and is the co-founder and president of Govern for California, [2] [3] a non-profit organization seeking to counter special interest influence in the California state legislature.
From 2004 to 2010 he served as a special advisor to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and from 1979 to 2003 he was a partner at Babcock & Brown, a financial services company. Formerly, he served on the University of California Board of Regents and as a director of the California State Teachers' Retirement System, California High-Speed Rail Authority, California Economic Development Commission, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Environmental Defense Fund, Legal Services for Children, Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, Society of Actuaries Blue Ribbon Panel on the Causes of Public Pension Underfunding, and Volcker-Ravitch Task Force on the State Budget Crisis. [4] [5]
Crane is a registered Democrat, and has written extensively on the subjects of government accounting, pension funding, government finance and investment policies, political reform, and state governance. In 2011 he co-founded Govern for California (GFC) with the goal of empowering state legislators to govern in the general interest and be less influenced by special interest groups when crafting legislation. Since 2019 GFC consistently ranks as the largest bundler of direct donations to state legislators when compared with other interest groups. [6] GFC consists of a network of 17 independently governed chapters (PACs) that make political donations. GFC has also championed good-governance bills such as AB 890 to enable nurse practitioners to practice independently, blocked bills such as AB 221 to ban Teach For America educators from working in charter and public schools, and successfully led the opposition to Proposition 30 in 2022 which would have increased California state taxes on personal income above $2 million to fund electric vehicle subsidies and wildfire prevention (the bulk of the funding for support of Prop 30 was from the rideshare company Lyft). [7]
The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. Headquartered in Oakland, the system is composed of its ten campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz, along with numerous research centers and academic centers abroad. The system is the state's land-grant university. Major publications generally rank most UC campuses as being among the best universities in the world. In 1900, UC was one of the founders of the Association of American Universities and since the 1970s seven of its campuses, in addition to Berkeley, have been admitted to the association. Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, and San Diego are considered Public Ivies, making California the state with the most universities in the nation to hold the title. UC campuses have large numbers of distinguished faculty in almost every academic discipline, with UC faculty and researchers having won 71 Nobel Prizes as of 2021.
The California State University is a public university system in California, and the largest public university system in the United States. It consists of 23 campuses and seven off-campus centers, which together enroll 457,992 students and employ 56,256 faculty and staff members. In California, it is one of the three public higher education systems, along with the University of California and the California Community Colleges systems. The CSU system is officially incorporated as The Trustees of the California State University, and is headquartered in Long Beach, California.
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The California State Legislature is a bicameral state legislature consisting of a lower house, the California State Assembly, with 80 members; and an upper house, the California State Senate, with 40 members. Both houses of the Legislature convene at the California State Capitol in Sacramento. The California state legislature is one of just ten full-time state legislatures in the United States. The houses are distinguished by the colors of the carpet and trim of each house. The Senate is distinguished by the color red and the Assembly by the color green, inspired by the United Kingdom's House of Lords and House of Commons respectively.
The Regents of the University of California is the governing board of the University of California (UC), a state university system in the U.S. state of California. The Board of Regents has 26 voting members, the majority of whom are appointed by the Governor of California to serve 12-year terms.
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The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) is an agency in the California executive branch that "manages pension and health benefits for more than 1.5 million California public employees, retirees, and their families". In fiscal year 2020–21, CalPERS paid over $27.4 billion in retirement benefits, and over $9.74 billion in health benefits.
The California Community Colleges is a postsecondary education system in the U.S. state of California. Despite its plural name, the system is consistently referred to in California law as a singular entity. The system includes the Board of Governors of the California Community Colleges and 73 community college districts. The districts currently operate 116 accredited colleges. The California Community Colleges is the largest system of higher education in the United States, and third largest system of higher education in the world, serving more than 1.8 million students.
The California special election of 2005 was held on November 8, 2005 after being called by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on June 13, 2005.
Joseph Edward Nation is an American politician and academic. He graduated from the University of Colorado with a B.A. in Economics, German and French. While he was a Pan Am flight attendant, he studied at Georgetown University under Madeleine Albright as a James T. Webb Fellow in Science, Technology, and Diplomacy while earning a Masters in Foreign Service. He subsequently earned a Ph.D. in Public Policy Analysis from the RAND Graduate School and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Stanford University, where he conducted research on defense conversion and wrote a book, The De-Escalation of Nuclear Crises.
Joseph John Jelincic Jr. is an American member of the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) Board and is the past president of the California State Employees Association (CSEA), a labor group representing 140,000 active and retired state employees. A rank-and-file investment officer for the CalPERS since 1986, he was elected to the CalPERS Board of Administration in December 2009 as a Member-At-Large representing all CalPERS members.
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Nancy Skinner is an American politician who is member of the California State Senate. A Democrat, she represents California's 9th State Senatorial district, encompassing parts of the East Bay.
The history of the University of California, Berkeley, begins on October 13, 1849, with the adoption of the Constitution of California, which provided for the creation of a public university. On Charter Day, March 23, 1868, the signing of the Organic Act established the University of California, with the new institution inheriting the land and facilities of the private College of California and the federal funding eligibility of a public agricultural, mining, and mechanical arts college.
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Samuel Blakeslee is the founding Director of the Institute for Advanced Technology & Public Policy at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Blakeslee is a former Republican California State Senator representing California's 15th State Senate district which included the counties of Santa Clara, Monterey, San Luis Obispo, Santa Cruz and Santa Barbara. He previously served as a California State Assemblyman from California's 33rd State Assembly district, and a former State Assembly Republican Leader. He was elected to the California State Assembly in 2004 to represent the 33rd Assembly District, He was re-elected in 2006 and 2008, and elected to the California State Senate in 2010. Blakeslee retired from the Senate in December 2012.
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