State Finance Chief Quits to Help With Special Election

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s finance director, former congressman and professor Tom Campbell, stepped down Wednesday to help the governor campaign for two initiatives on the November special election ballot and to return to academia.

After less than a year on the job, Campbell is leaving to promote Proposition 76, the governor’s attempt to overhaul the state budget system, and Proposition 77, which would require a panel of judges, rather than lawmakers, to draw voting districts.

Campbell is on leave as dean of the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley; he said in an interview that he would return to that post after the campaign.

He said promoting the budget initiative was the most important thing he could do for the state.

“It’s essential. It’s now or never,” Campbell said. “The alternative is that we continue to spend more than we take in.”

Schwarzenegger said in a statement that Campbell’s “ability to articulate the need for budget reform and his knowledge of the budget make him uniquely qualified to be a fantastic asset to the campaign.”

State Treasurer Phil Angelides, a Democratic candidate for governor, said Campbell’s departure from the finance director’s post is a sign that “Schwarzenegger has no credible and viable plan to end the state’s deficit borrowing, balance the budget and put California on the road to fiscal recovery.”