David Crane

David Crane is a Lecturer in Public Policy at Stanford University and president of Govern For California.

From 2004 – 2010 he served as a special advisor to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and from 1979-2003 he was a partner at Babcock & Brown, a financial services company. Crane also serves on the board of the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California. Formerly he served on the University of California Board of Regents and as a director of the California State Teachers' Retirement System, California High Speed Rail Authority, California Economic Development Commission, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Environmental Defense Fund, Legal Services for Children, Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, Society of Actuaries Blue Ribbon Panel on the Causes of Public Pension Underfunding, and Volcker-Ravitch Task Force on the State Budget Crisis.

Crane has written extensively and been cited often on the subjects of government accounting, pension funding, government finance and investment policies, political reform, and state governance. In 2006 the California Legislature removed him from the board of the California State Teachers' Retirement System after he questioned the system's reporting of pension liabilities and assumptions about future investment earnings.[1] In 2011 his term as a UC Regent was allowed to lapse without confirmation by the California Legislature after he expressed concerns that state funding of higher education was jeopardized in part by the failure to properly account for and pre-fund public employee pensions.[2] [3]