The 13th Senate District race went negative last week as Assemblyman Jerry Hill and former Assemblywoman Sally Lieber traded blows over contributions to Hill’s campaign by a PG&E-supported PAC and Lieber’s misleading remarks about a 2006 pay raise.
Hill has dogged Pacific Gas & Electric since the 2010 pipeline explosion that killed eight people in San Bruno, denouncing PG&E for its safety failures and passing several laws intended to tighten regulations governing the utility.
So why, asked Lieber, did Californians for Jobs and a Strong Economy, a PAC that’s received $130,700 from PG&E since 2011, give $7,800 to Hill’s campaign this year? She said the contribution raises questions about Hill’s performance, and called on him to give it back.
Hill declined, saying, “Since the explosion in San Bruno, I have not accepted a direct political contribution from PG&E and I have no intention of ever again accepting one. I stack my record against anyone on this issue, especially Sally Lieber.”
And he struck back, noting that Lieber misled a Pacifica audience in March about a $12,000 salary increase during her time in the Assembly. She had rejected the hike during an election year as the state grappled with a multibillion-dollar deficit, but later accepted it.
However, Lieber told the March gathering of Democrats, “I turned down those pay increases,” according to a video clip provided by the Hill campaign.
On Friday she admitted that she misspoke that day, and she repeated what she told the Sacramento Bee in 2006, that her husband felt she deserved the money due to her long hours.
Contact Aaron Kinney at 650-348-4357. Follow him at Twitter.com/kinneytimes.
