Deukmejian Names 2nd Aide to State Panel

Lame-duck Gov. George Deukmejian on Friday named his chief of staff, Michael R. Frost, to a $95,000-a-year position on a newly created board that oversees garbage disposal, recycling and other waste management issues.

Frost is the second top official in the outgoing Deukmejian Administration to get one of the lucrative jobs on the Integrated Waste Management Board. The posts were established as part of compromise legislation in 1989.

Deukmejian last week appointed Finance Director Jess Huff to a spot on the board. He has two remaining openings to fill on the six-member panel that is charged with reducing the amount of waste sent to landfills by 50%.

Frost has been Deukmejian’s top aide since 1987 and before that served as his legislative secretary for three years. He formerly was director of the California State Personnel Board, served as a federal government official and was an aide to a state senator. His six-year term on the board will begin Jan. 4, three days before Deukmejian leaves office.

Also Friday, Deukmejian appointed Ronald T. Rinaldi, a Cabinet officer and veteran survivor of political and bureaucratic thickets, to a $83,953-a-year post as executive director of the state Employment Training Panel.

The seven-member panel doles out millions of dollars each year to private corporations and public entities to retrain workers whose jobs are threatened by unemployment or advancing technology.

Deukmejian’s appointment of Rinaldi, a Republican, to a three-year term is not subject to confirmation by the Senate.

Rinaldi, 55, who has a bachelor’s degree in business management from Armstrong College, has held top-level regulatory posts in industrial relations and worker safety since 1967, when Ronald Reagan was governor.

Under Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., Rinaldi served from 1974 as executive officer of the state Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board. In 1984, Deukmejian appointed Rinaldi as his director of industrial relations, a Cabinet-level post.