SACRAMENTO — On the June 6 primary ballot, Michelle Steel is identified as a deputy to a member of the powerful tax board on which she is seeking a seat. It is a job title that political analysts say is likely to help her win votes.
But Steel held the job for only three months. In the meantime, the man she replaced was demoted, took a salary cut, and found a second job: working for the Steel campaign. Soon after the state approved the ballot language, Steel resigned and her replacement returned to his former job.
As a member of the obscure Board of Equalization, which pays $131,000 a year, Steel would be one of five commissioners overseeing more than $40 billion in tax collections for the state, routinely presiding over cases involving multinational companies contesting millions of dollars in payments.
"It's outrageous," said Assemblyman Ray Haynes (R-Murrieta), Steel's opponent in the June primary election for a board district that encompasses five counties south and east of Los Angeles. He accused Steel of "paying the guy who already had that job so she could look better on the ballot.... I've never heard of anything like that going on before."
Steel hopes to succeed Claude Parrish, a leading Republican candidate for state treasurer and a close political ally of her husband, Shawn Steel, a former state GOP chairman.
State personnel records show that Parrish demoted Marcus Frishman, his deputy of eight years, on Dec. 30. Parrish then moved Steel, whose official campaign biography shows little accounting experience, into the job. She filed her campaign papers in mid-March with the job title of "Equalization Boardmember's Deputy." On March 31, personnel records show, she resigned.
During those three months, Frishman worked as an assistant to Parrish. According to the state, his monthly salary was reduced from $9,223 to $6,394. He was hired, for an undisclosed amount, to work for Steel's campaign. Frishman was reinstated as deputy April 1, with a $91 monthly raise over the higher salary.
Steel declined to comment. Parrish did not return multiple phone calls placed over two weeks. Frishman would say only that his job was switched while he was on vacation before referring questions to the board's personnel division, which also declined to comment.
