Lockyer

California Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer has hired an outside expert to help find a buyer for a Bakersfield refinery that Shell Oil Co. plans to close this fall, a spokesman for Lockyer said Wednesday. "Shell has said the refinery is not a marketable commodity. We're going to find out if that's true," spokesman Tom Dresslar said. "The ultimate objective is to try to find a viable buyer." Years ago, the closure of a refinery was welcome news -- at least to its neighbors.

With San Diego residents steaming over soaring electricity bills, California Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer said Wednesday he will investigate the recent power price spikes. "We are investigating decisions that led up to the current rate increase in San Diego. Obviously if any individual or company has acted illegally I intend to identify and punish those behaviors," Lockyer told Reuters. "San Diegans urgently need short-term relief from skyrocketing electricity bills.

Then-state Sen. Bill Lockyer, now California's attorney general, warned in a 1991 memo to fellow legislators that contracts being drawn for four private roads, including the 91 Express Lanes, had serious defects that were likely to come back to haunt the state. Chief among his concerns were prohibitions that prevented the state from building freeways or making road improvements that would compete with business on the private toll roads.

California Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer backed a call by a civil rights group Friday for greater scrutiny of alleged police brutality and said law enforcement must take the initiative to prevent such incidents. Speaking to a panel of the state chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People in South Los Angeles, Lockyer said his office received complaints "every day" about inadequate follow-through on potential civil rights violations by police agencies.

It was unquestionably political, but science ...? Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer's latest literary enthusiasm is a book titled "E=MC2: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation," a bit of reading he put to good use at the recent state Democratic convention in Los Angeles. Lockyer treated delegates to a PowerPoint presentation of his own periodic chart of elements. Herewith, the Lockyer version of hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, and so on: Burtonium: a highly volatile element that explodes when it comes into contact with cell phones, maitres d', Republicans, governors, air, water, etc. (John Burton, the state Senate president, is known as a man with an equal-opportunity wit as well as temper, across the political and social spectrum.

California Treasurer Bill Lockyer on Tuesday asked the country's biggest public pension fund to conduct an internal investigation into investments it made through so-called placement agents, who raise funds for outside asset managers. The request to the California Public Employees' Retirement System board is the latest fallout from investigations by New York Atty. Gen. Andrew Cuomo and the Securities and Exchange Commission of alleged pension-fund improprieties in New York state.

SACRAMENTO - The election wasn't even over Tuesday when state Treasurer Bill Lockyer's phone started ringing. Activists of all stripes had the same message for him: With voters apparently poised to approve billions of dollars in tax hikes, it was time to spend more money. "They had to be reminded the money has already been spent," Lockyer said. As California tries to shake its national reputation as a financial bungler, policymakers in Sacramento will be managing an estimated $6 billion in annual revenue from Gov. Jerry Brown's newly approved tax plan, Proposition 30. The money is already included in the budget the governor signed last summer.

When California offered tax-free bonds for sale in recent years, the state could always count on robust demand from yield-hungry individual investors. Suddenly, many of those investors seem to be on strike. This week, individual investors put in orders for a modest 22% of the state's offering of $1.8 billion in tax-free bonds to finance infrastructure projects. By contrast, those buyers had snapped up 28% of the state's previous debt sale, in September. And in November they sought nearly 80% of the bonds California offered for sale.

The candidates for California attorney general tangled Monday over medical marijuana, campaign donations and the enforcement of laws against pollution and consumer fraud. In a debate on KCET-TV (Channel 28), Republican Chief Deputy Atty. Gen. Dave Stirling characterized his Democratic foe, state Sen. Bill Lockyer, as a "1960s Bay Area liberal."

California antitrust enforcers said SBC Communications Inc.'s proposed $16-billion purchase of AT&T Corp. was unlikely to harm competition for most products. In an advisory opinion filed Friday with state regulators, which are reviewing the transaction, Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer recommended only one condition of approval: a one-year pricing freeze for some high-capacity phone and data lines purchased from AT&T by competing telecommunications companies.