Capitol Weekly’s Top 100: Lia Lopez

33. Lia Lopez

As the chief administrative officer for the Assembly Rules Committee, Lia Lopez is one of the most important cogs in the machinery of the legislature. Her committee effectively runs the Assembly by not only overseeing the chamber’s administrative business but by also assigning bills to other committees, and this capitol veteran is in charge of it all. The daughter of Rubin Lopez, who worked as the chief counsel of the Assembly Judiciary Committee for over a decade, Lia Lopez started working at the Capitol during her dad’s last year in the building. She spent most of her career as the bill referral consultant under long-time former CAO Jon Waldie. She also had a brief stint as the director of Assembly Floor Analysis under Assembly Chief Clerk Dotson Wilson before taking over as CAO from Debra Gravert in December 2022. Lopez has degrees in political science and history from UC Davis and masters of public administration from USC, but perhaps her greatest education came from her mentors, Waldie, Wilson and Gravert, three towering figures in the history of the Capitol.

Updated Aug. 7, 2024