After a five-month vacancy, Governor Jerry Brown has appointed Daniel C. Kim to head the Department of General Services (DGS), the state’s chief procurement arm. Chief Deputy Director Esteban Almanza has been acting director since Fred Klass retired in December.

Kim, 46, received a Bachelor of Arts at the University of California, Berkeley and a Master of Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Kim, a Democrat, was a fiscal and policy analyst for the California Legislative Analyst’s Office from September 1994 to April 1996. He left to become a management consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Two years later, he signed on as budget and legislative affairs manager at the San Francisco Department of Human Resources.

Kim departed San Francisco in May 2002 to become deputy director at the Sacramento County Department of Human Assistance and stayed for nine years. He joined state government in June 2011 as chief deputy director of operations at the Department of Public Health. His office oversaw (pdf) the department’s Administrative Division, Information Technology Services and the Office of Legal Services.

The DGS was moved from the old State and Consumer Services Agency to the newly-created Government Operations Agency in July 2013. The department provides centralized services to state agencies in the management of the government’s real estate and “procurement of commodities, services and equipment” (pdf) for them.

The DGS manages the state’s vehicle fleet and approves architectural designs for local schools and other state-owned buildings, in addition to providing printing services for agencies. Governor Brown’s proposed 2015-16 budget funds 3,596 DGS positions and total expenditures of $1.05 billion.

The department oversees about $9 billion in procurements throughout the government each year. It manages tens of millions of square feet of office and warehouse space, buys and sells real estate, oversees 50,000 vehicles in the state’s vehicle fleet, buys $300 million worth of natural gas each year and purchases $3 billion worth of insurance annually.

As director of the department, Kim will sit on several state boards and commissions. The Senate must still confirm his appointment. His annual compensation is $167,360.64.

–Ken Broder

Governor Brown Announces Appointments (Office of the Governor)

Daniel Kim (LinkedIn)

Maximizing Medi-Cal: Sonoma’s Efforts to Expand Health Coverage) (by Daniel C. Kim) (pdf)