Lockyer Delays Action on Budget Director Nominee

Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer on Monday sidetracked the nomination of Gov. Pete Wilson’s state budget director while a Senate committee investigates charges that false testimony was given on a proposed Mojave Desert nuclear waste dump two years ago.

The Democratic lawmaker’s motion to send the pending confirmation of Russell Gould back to the Rules Committee, which had previously approved him, occurred without dissent amid renewed controversy over the safety of the Ward Valley site.

While the committee conducts its election-year investigation, Gould will remain on the job as director of finance. Earlier, Gould had been in charge of the state agency that licenses nuclear dump sites.

A spokesman for Wilson said Gould, in his present job, has “absolutely nothing to do with Ward Valley now or will he ever. We are confident (the senators) will come to the conclusion that Russ Gould is the best person for the job.”

The Ward Valley issue was reignited last week when U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) charged that the state Department of Health Services had deliberately suppressed information about the types and amounts of nuclear wastes that would be dumped there, including plutonium-239 from nuclear power plants.

State health officials have denied that they changed their estimates of the amount of plutonium intended for Ward Valley. They said a so-called worst-case scenario involving plutonium was merely a theoretical projection required by the federal government in a license application.

Monday’s action was the second time the Senate delayed advancing Gould because of concerns that dumping nuclear waste at Ward Valley could contaminate the nearby Colorado River.

Gould was Wilson’s nominee for secretary of health and welfare in 1992, when controversy first erupted over the safety of the site. As secretary, Gould had administrative authority over the Department of Health Services, which is responsible for nuclear safety licensing and enforcement in California.

The confirmations of Gould and of Molly Coye, the governor’s nominee to direct the Department of Health Services, were delayed until the Senate satisfied itself that safety issues would be properly addressed by the two officials. Coye left the Administration last year.

Coye and Gould both testified as witnesses before the committee that the site posed no danger to Southern California, which draws some of its drinking water from the Colorado River.

Gould later was promoted to state director of finance, the most powerful fiscal post in Wilson’s Administration. He was unanimously recommended for confirmation by the Rules Committee last September, but a final vote by the Democratic-controlled Senate has been on hold ever since.

Lockyer said Boxer, an outspoken foe of the Ward Valley site, told him officials of the department “intentionally misled the Legislature about the nature and extent of the radioactive materials that would be deposited at Ward Valley.”

“It is a serious charge and ought to be resolved before we act on Gould’s confirmation,” Lockyer told reporters.

The Democratic senator said the investigation would look into whether Gould, Coye and other state officials knew whether “the waste stream description was different from that which they told us” two years ago.

He said it was uncertain when the committee would hold new hearings on Gould and when the investigation would conclude.