Bronzan Will Resign From Assembly, Cites Term Limits

Democratic Assemblyman Bruce Bronzan of Fresno, chairman of the Assembly Health Committee and a fiery defender of medical care for the poor, announced Monday that he is quitting the Legislature to take a job with the University of California.

Bronzan, a 10-year veteran of the Legislature’s lower house, said frustration with state politics and the advent of term limits helped prompt him to seize what he called a “wonderful opportunity” to take the post as associate dean of the UC San Francisco School of Medicine.

The lawmaker’s decision will not affect next week’s election, because Bronzan is running unopposed in the 31st Assembly District, which includes about half of Fresno and several surrounding communities. He said his resignation will be effective Dec. 23. A special election will be held early next year to fill the seat.

Bronzan, 45, has been in government for 18 years, including his service on the Fresno County Board of Supervisors. Much of that time he spent working on health care issues. As chairman of the Assembly Health Committee, he said, he has watched as recent spending reductions hampered the effectiveness of the state and county public health network.

“The last couple of years have been very frustrating,” Bronzan said in an interview. “Most of my experience and background has been used to preside over the demise of a system I spent the last two decades trying to build.”

Bronzan said the increasingly partisan nature of the Assembly and the requirement that state budgets be approved by a vote of two-thirds of the members of each house of the Legislature are “making it very difficult for anything to happen” in state government.

Term limits, passed statewide in 1990, meant that Bronzan would be forced to leave the Assembly no later than 1996, even though he was reelected without opposition two years ago and this year he is the only candidate on the ballot in his district.

“The notion that I would be changing careers, that I had no future in politics, was a decision made by the voters of the state,” he said. “The decision left for me to make was the timing, the manner and circumstances of my leaving.”

He predicted that there will be a wave of similar departures over the next four years, as veteran lawmakers facing term limits take jobs outside of government even before the law prevents them from seeking reelection.

“It’s simple,” he said. “If you know there is absolutely no future in what you’re doing, and you have two years, four years maximum, left, what do you do? Do you wait until the end of that time to decide what to do with the rest of your life? No. When the best opportunity comes up for you, that’s right for the kind of future you want for yourself, you’ll take it.”