GOP Leader Hurtt Defends Loaning State Car to Son

As state Senate GOP Leader Rob Hurtt tells it, he was just being a good dad.

Last month, the conservative Republican from Garden Grove loaned his state-owned sport vehicle to his teen-age son for a trip to a friend’s wedding in Montana. Hurtt says he believed that his son, Spencer, and a friend would be safer on that long journey in the beefy sport utility vehicle than in the youth’s tiny pickup.

If so, Hurtt’s decision proved prophetic. Early on Aug. 15, Spencer Hurtt crashed the new state vehicle into the back of a pickup truck on an isolated stretch of Interstate 15 outside Barstow. Although the 18-year-old youth and his friend escaped injury, the driver and a passenger in the other pickup say they’ve been seeing doctors for head, neck and shoulder pain.

For Hurtt, the episode has become something of a political pain in the neck. Although Senate rules do not specifically prohibit the use of state-owned vehicles by a legislator’s family, news of the crash had politicos in the Capitol tittering at the expense of the newly christened king of Senate Republicans.

In the past, Hurtt has made a point of driving his own car while doing public business. The wealthy owner of an Orange County firm that manufactures plastic buckets and decorative tins, Hurtt declared soon after he was elected in 1993 that he wanted to save tax money by not using a state-owned vehicle.

How, then, to explain the sport vehicle, which was purchased for him by the Senate Rules Committee in May?

“I had been the most austere person around,” Hurtt said Tuesday. “I decided after three years that I had been a good boy long enough, and I should be able to drive a [state-owned] car like anyone else.”

State legislators live in a glass-house world where the perquisites of their political posts are cherished, but that didn’t stop some of Hurtt’s foes from having fun with his politically itchy predicament.

“If that’s what happened, yes, that does sound questionable,” Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward) said of Spencer Hurtt’s use of the state-owned truck. “But, frankly, I think it’s more important to criticize him for his extreme right-wing politics than for this incident.”

Under Senate rules, there is an assumption that there will be personal use of a state-owned car by legislators, but it’s “up to the discretion of the member” when it comes to family members taking the wheel, said Greg Schmidt, executive officer of the Senate Rules Committee. Schmidt said legislators are required to pay at least 10% of the cost of the vehicle and carry their own private insurance in case of accidents. The Senate pays up to $450 a month for a legislator’s vehicle.

Hurtt said he uses the truck for legislative business in Southern California, and that his son rarely gets behind the wheel, preferring his own small pickup instead.

George Lippincott, 38, a painting contractor from Murietta whose car was rammed by Spencer Hurtt, said the accident has caused him major problems. He was on the way to a big job in Las Vegas. The crash, he said, caused him to lose the job and that income. The $2,000 settlement he got from Hurtt’s insurance company didn’t cover what he felt his 1985 truck was worth, let alone the $10,000 in painting equipment he contends was ruined.