Wilson Opposes State Tax Board Appointment

WASHINGTON — Gov. Pete Wilson’s office said Wednesday he is challenging the appointment of an acting member of the State Board of Equalization by an outgoing tax board member who was elected to Congress, saying there is no authority in law to hand down the post that way.

Freshman Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman of Sherman Oaks, who was sworn in Tuesday as a member of Congress, resigned from the state tax board effective Jan. 2, and said the job automatically passed to his chief aide, John Chiang, the next day.

Wilson contends it is his right, not Sherman’s, to name a successor.

“We are seeking a legal opinion” on the appointment, said Sean Walsh, press secretary for the Republican governor. “Obviously, we want to fill that position.”

But before seeing Chiang installed as a voting member of the tax board, Sherman requested an opinion from Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, a Republican, who said last week that the move was on solid legal ground, Sherman said.

According to Lungren’s opinion, Chiang can serve out the remaining two years of Sherman’s term or serve until the Legislature allows a Wilson appointee to take the job.

“I thought all the differences had been resolved. If there’s a legal dispute here, I don’t know what it is,” Sherman said Wednesday. “I cannot imagine that Pete Wilson would call into question the legal competence of Dan Lungren’s office.”

Sherman said the reason he wanted Chiang to succeed him was his skill at the job. “He is an extremely qualified tax attorney and has been outstanding in his role as chief deputy.”

While Wilson maintains he has the primary authority to fill the position until the 1998 election, as a practical matter such gubernatorial appointments have often run into Democratic opposition in the state Assembly and Senate.

The law states that the governor can appoint a replacement and each house of the Legislature has a right to review the nominee before he or she takes the board seat. Either house can reject the nominee. But if no action is taken within 90 days, the governor’s appointment stands.

Yet when Wilson tried to appoint a replacement for Democrat tax board member Bill Bennett in 1993, majority Democrats in the two houses refused to accept several of Wilson’s choices for the job and the position remained vacant for two years.

Though Sherman maintains that the tax board “checks party partisanship at the door,” Democrats have been hurt before by approving Republican gubernatorial appointments, he recalled.

“Matt Fong was appointed to a tax board vacancy and approved by the Democrat-controlled legislature,” said Sherman. “But Democrats noticed that Mr. Fong, much to their consternation, sought the state treasurer’s job, demonstrating [that] when a Democratic Legislature confirms a Republican in a elected constitutional office, that person might run for a higher office and be in an extremely good position to do so.”

Allowing his deputy to replace him forestalls a possible partisan deadlock that would leave the seat vacant, Sherman contended, saying the “very people the governor would want to appoint, the Legislature would be unlikely to confirm.”

Chiang is the only Asian American Democrat holding state constitutional office, Sherman said, making his replacement even more politically sensitive.

“I suspect Wilson will be urged by even his own friends in the Asian community to keep [Chiang] in a post for which he is clearly qualified,” said Sherman.