CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / TREASURER : Brown TV Ad Raps Hayes’ Attendance Record

Democrat Kathleen Brown, in a new television ad unveiled Tuesday, is portraying incumbent Republican Thomas W. Hayes as a no-show member of more than a dozen state commissions and boards.

The ad, part of a $1.5-million television blitz Brown has mounted for the final two weeks of her campaign against Hayes, selectively surveys only 14 of the 44 major commissions, committees and state agencies that the treasurer chairs or sits on as a member. During the 1 1/2-year period that Brown surveyed--from the time Hayes took office in January, 1989, as an appointee of Gov. George Deukmejian, until August, 1990--she contends Hayes attended only five of a possible 190 meetings.

A Hayes campaign official immediately cried foul and said campaign lawyers would ask television stations to pull the ad.

Donna Lucas, Hayes’ campaign manager, said Brown portrayed Hayes’ attendance record unfairly and inaccurately. What’s more, Lucas said, Brown makes false claims in the ad that Hayes passed up an opportunity to address the state Assembly last July to attend the opening of the Richard M. Nixon Library in Yorba Linda.

Lucas said Hayes was in Orange County on the day of the library dedication, but for a breakfast with President Bush that was related to but not part of the actual ceremony.

“Tom Hayes never attended the opening of the Nixon Library,” Lucas said.

Brown, contacted by telephone during campaign stops, said she has no intention of pulling the ad. The Democrat said she based the comment about the Nixon Library on press reports.

The Hayes camp angrily challenged other statements in the ad. The Brown ad says that “on his watch, the state lost $84 million in bad junk-bond investments.” That is a reference to a drop in the paper value of bonds held by the state. An actual dollar loss will not materialize unless the state investment boards sell the devalued bonds, which so far has not happened.

The Brown ad also claims Hayes’ “budget projections were off $4.5 billion dollars.” That is a reference to budget figures put out by the nonpartisan, seven-member Commission on State Finance that Hayes chairs. Lucas contends that it is unfair to single out Hayes, since the seven members of the commission agreed on the budget figures.

As for Hayes’ attendance record on the little-known but important state boards and commissions, Brown said she did not expect the treasurer to attend all the meetings but promised to “have a far greater presence at those meetings” than her opponent. “He attended about 2% of the meetings. That just doesn’t cut it,” she said.

In conducting her attendance survey, Brown said she chose what she considered some of the most important boards the treasurer sits on, such as the Health Facilities Financing Agency and the Educational Facilities Authority. Hayes chairs both boards, but records released by the Democrat show that he has not attended a single one of their meetings, choosing instead to send surrogates.

Lucas, in defending Hayes, said the treasurer is a member of so many boards, commissions and agencies that he could not possibly attend them all and still tend to the administrative duties of the treasurer’s office and oversee investment policy. Although a campaign biography lists 44 major boards and commissions that Hayes heads or is a member of, Lucas said the actual figure is closer to 60. She said the law clearly provides for the treasurer to send a deputy.

“The treasurer has either attended or had a representative at more than 500 meetings of these 60 boards,” Lucas said. She said that Hayes meets daily with key deputies who attend the meetings as his surrogate.

Comparative figures were not available for previous treasurers.

The number of boards and commissions the treasurer sits on proliferated under the late Jesse M. Unruh, who is said to have personally attended many of the meetings.

Grover McKean, an investment banker who served as chief deputy under Unruh and now supports Brown, said the former treasurer insisted on chairing meetings even “when he was dying of terminal cancer.”