Editorial: Grading Sacramento: Senate Leader Kevin de León

When Kevin de León took over as president pro tem of the California Senate a year ago, he inherited a bruised legislative body plagued by crisis and scandal. Two senators had been indicted for corruption. A third had been convicted of perjury and voter fraud and had stepped down the previous month. And a fourth had been arrested for driving under the influence after drinking with other legislators on a Capitol balcony.

The Senate bureaucracy was in disarray too. Two of the three top staffers had just left amid allegations of nepotism and favoritism. The third, top Senate administrator Greg Schmidt, was retiring. De León was welcomed to his new job by a $3.5-million structural deficit in the Senate’s budget. One of his first actions was to lay off 39 employees. Not a great way to earn popularity points.

Today, that dark cloud over the Senate has dissipated. The bad actors are gone or rehabilitated, the top staffers have been replaced and the public has moved on. But had there been just one misstep or sniff of scandal during the year, every detail of the terrible times might have been revived. It’s to the credit of De León (D-Los Angeles) that it didn’t happen.

In fact, the upper house of the Legislature didn’t just survive, it logged a pretty good year. Senators showed a calm unified front, in sharp contrast to the chaos in the Assembly. They introduced and passed crucial bills — eventually approved by the Assembly and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown — that will have long-lasting implications for Californians, including one that ended the personal belief exemption for vaccines for public school children, and a right-to-die law for terminally ill people.

Those two bills opened emotionally charged but necessary conversations that a less bold Senate leader might have tried to avoid, especially if he was focused — as De León was — on his own potentially polarizing proposal. Among the year’s most meaningful and controversial bills was his SB 350, a far-reaching proposal to reduce carbon emissions. Although scaled back in the final days of the last session, it will still have a powerful impact on the state.