Deputy D.A. for a Special Day : Ex-Gov. Pat Brown Gets the Job to Swear In Daughter as Treasurer

The newest deputy district attorney in Los Angeles County has lots of experience. For starters, he once served as district attorney in San Francisco. He was attorney general of California. And for eight years, he was governor of the state.

Yes, Edmund G. (Pat) Brown is back in public service--at least through Monday.

On that day, Brown’s daughter, Kathleen, will take the oath of office as state treasurer in Sacramento. She wants her 85-year-old father, now in private practice, to swear her in.

But despite his impressive resume, the elder Brown wasn’t qualified. “Formers” aren’t empowered to administer oaths. Under California law, a person has to be either a judge or a prosecutor to swear in a state official, said Reiner spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons.

Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner was happy to provide a solution Thursday.

In his 18th-floor office in the Criminal Courts Building, before 18 journalists, six television cameras and a battery of microphones, he conducted his own swearing-in ceremony, enlisting Brown as an unpaid addition to his approximately 950-member staff.

Then Reiner pushed an armload of court files at the former governor. “It’s not all just ‘Hail to the Chief,’ ” he joked. Ever politic, Brown simply put the caseload down.

Then he proceeded to act more like a judge than a prosecutor. Egged on by the assembled journalists, he rendered verdicts on the incoming governor (“(Pete) Wilson’s going to have a real problem taking care of the deficit”); his daughter (‘she’ll be thought of for higher office”); his personal fortune (“I’m independently wealthy”) and Orange County (“it’s a foreign land to me.”)

Monday’s ceremony will be the first time Brown has sworn one of his children into office.

Why didn’t he do this for his son, Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., also a former governor?

The senior Brown chortled. “He never asked me,” he said. “He didn’t need me. You know Jerry.”

STATE BOND BACKLOG: Treasurer-elect Kathleen Brown sounds like her election foe on bondbacklog. A33