The State - News from Feb. 2, 1989

On a unanimous 5-0 vote, a Senate committee voted Wednesday to confirm Gov. George Deukmejian’s appointment of Robert K. Best as new director of the state Department of Transportation. The Senate Rules Committee vote sent the 49-year-old Best’s nomination to the floor of the Senate, where final confirmation is expected to be nothing more than a formality. Best, a former attorney with the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation and a deputy director of Caltrans in the 1970s, has been acting head of the state’s huge highways and transportation agency for the past 10 months, pending confirmation.