Legislative Analyst Hamm to Quit Post : Will Take Vice President’s Job With World Savings & Loan Assn.

Legislative Analyst William G. Hamm announced Friday that he is quitting his $83,380-a-year post as the Legislature’s nonpartisan chief fiscal adviser to take a position with the state’s sixth-largest savings and loan association.

Hamm, 43, reportedly will receive a six-figure salary as vice president of operations analysis with World Savings & Loan Assn. in Oakland, which has $11.5 billion in assets. He plans to leave in mid-April.

“It’s a good opportunity,” Hamm said of his new job. “I like this job . . . (but) I can’t say that working for the Legislature has always been a piece of cake.”

The Joint Legislative Budget Committee, headed by Sen. Walter W. Stiern (D-Bakersfield), is charged with finding Hamm’s replacement. Stiern expressed regret at Hamm’s decision.

A nationwide search is expected to be conducted for a successor.

Hamm’s announcement came two days after he called on lawmakers to increase fees paid by university students and motorists, but to reject more than $900 million in programs in Gov. George Deukmejian’s proposed $36.7-billion state budget.

He also said the governor’s spending plan underestimated state expenditures by $481 million, in part by including “phony” estimates of Medi-Cal costs.

Hamm became the state’s third legislative analyst when he was hired in 1977 to act as the successor to his uncle, A. Alan Post, who had held the job since 1949. Hamm previously was deputy associate director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget in Washington.

Besides the budget, Hamm and his staff of 70 deputies analyze bills for the fiscal committees of both houses of the Legislature and conduct investigations into various state programs.

Hamm said his new job will include duties similar to those he performs now, such as “trying to determine how we can do it more effectively, how we can do it at a lower cost, and what should we be doing in the future that we’re not doing now.”