https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-11-29-mn-2787-story.html
2 More Brown Associates Get Well-Paid Posts : Government: The Speaker appoints his frequent companion and a longtime friend to state boards as his hold on his own powerful position wanes.
By DAN MORAIN
NOV. 29, 1994
12 AM
TIMES STAFF WRITER
SACRAMENTO —
Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, continuing his rush to hand out patronage jobs while he retains his powerful post, has given high-paying appointments to his former law associate and a former Alameda County prosecutor who is Brown’s frequent companion.
Brown, exercising his power even as his speakership seems near an end, named attorney Kamala Harris to the California Medical Assistance Commission, a job that pays $72,000 a year.
Harris, a former deputy district attorney in Alameda County, was described by several people at the Capitol as Brown’s girlfriend. In March, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen called her “the Speaker’s new steady.” Harris declined to be interviewed Monday and Brown’s spokeswoman did not return phone calls.
Harris accepted the appointment last week after serving six months as Brown’s appointee to the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, which pays $97,088 a year. After Harris resigned from the unemployment board last week, Brown replaced her with Philip S. Ryan, a lawyer and longtime friend and business associate.
“It’s politics as usual,” said Robert M. Stern, co-director of the Center for Governmental Studies, a nonprofit group in Los Angeles. “Governors have done this in the past. This is a tradition the Speaker is carrying on. There are always outcries. People say it is wrong, and when they get in power they do the same thing.”