Posts Tagged: cooley

Construction, politics, secrecy clash in Capitol project

The state Capitol's East Annex. (Photo: State Department of General Services)

by CHUCK McFADDEN posted 12.29.2020

A fight is brewing in the Capitol – about the Capitol. It’s all about plans to build a new Visitors Center beneath the domed West Wing and demolish the 68-year-old East Annex, replacing it with one of three proposed buildings.

In title, Assemblyman Ken Cooley is a freshman lawmaker, one of a new crop of legislators in the historic class of 2012.

In fact, he’s no stranger to the Capitol: Cooley, a Democrat, served nearly eight years as the late Assemblyman Lou “The Enforcer” Papan’s senior aide (Papan ran the Rules Committee with an