George R. Reilly, State Official 44 Years, Dies
George R. Reilly, who served 44 years on the powerful State Board of Equalization, giving him the longest tenure of any elected official in California history, died Tuesday at age 82 after a long illness.
Reilly suffered a stroke shortly after he retired from the board in July, 1982, and had since been in failing health. He died in a San Francisco convalescent hospital.
Reilly was a real estate broker who had served on the San Francisco Elections Commission and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors when he was asked to run for the equalization board in 1938 by then-Gov. Culbert L. Olson.
He won 11 consecutive four-year terms to the State Board of Equalization, which sets property tax assessments on railroads and privately owned utilities and administers state sales tax collections. It also is the ultimate property tax appeals board.
Reilly, who was California vice chairman of President Harry S. Truman’s 1948 election campaign (“a job nobody wanted,” he later said), twice ran unsuccessfully for mayor of San Francisco, in 1943 and 1955.
His 1st Equalization District extended from San Francisco southward to the northern portion of Los Angeles County.
Reilly’s immediate survivors include a son and two daughters.
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