Former State Assembly Member, Speaker Pro-Tem Fred Keeley is currently Treasurer-Tax Collector of the County of Santa Cruz. Mr. Keeley was appointed to this countywide elected position on January 3, 2005.

Prior to his service in this capacity, Mr. Keeley served as Executive Director of the Planning & Conservation League, and the PCL Foundation. These two forty-year-old environmental organizations are established leaders in the research, development, and enactment of major environmental protection policy. In this position Mr. Keeley worked closely with State Parks regarding new acquisitions and environmental conservation issues statewide.

As such, he was the highest ranking member of the Speaker’s leadership team, and was responsible for analysis and management of the majority’s policy initiatives. During his service in the legislature, Mr. Keeley authored the Marine Life Management Act.

The Associated Press characterized that legislation as the “most significant advancement in ocean policy in fifty years” in California. Mr. Keeley also authored the two largest park and environmental protection bonds in the nation’s history, a total of $4.7 billion. Additionally, the University of California at Santa Cruz established a lecture series in his honor, the Fred Keeley Lectures on the Environment. The inaugural lecture was presented in 2004 by former Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt.

From 1988 until his election to the state Assembly, Mr. Keeley served two terms on the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors where he was a long-time friend of State Parks and championed our environmental ethics and principles.

Mr. Keeley is widely known and recognized as being a man of principle, high ethical standards and wisdom and is the unanimous selection for the CSPRA 2010 Honorary California State Park Ranger.