a result of the investigation, Quackenbush resigned his office. During this time, Keeley also authored the two largest park and environmental protection bonds in the nation's history, Proposition 12 on the California ballot in March 2000, and Proposition 40 on the California ballot in March 2002. Together, these voter-approved bonds provided $4.7 billion for environmental protection, park land and other valuable habitat land acquisition throughout the nation's most populated state. California electricity crisis In late 2000 and early 2001, the California electricity crisis manifested itself with rolling blackouts in many parts of the state. Speaker Robert Hertzberg appointed Keeley, his Speaker pro Tempore, as "chief operating officer" for the Assembly on the energy crisis. This position had three primary duties: to establish a triage system for dealing with day-to-day, minute-to-minute emergencies that were direct outgrowths of the lack of electricity; to form a policy group, both at the staff and legislator level, to sort out those ideas that were being advanced to solve the problem, and make recommendations to the Speaker and the Governor, on how to tackle the many fronts on which this crisis was expanding; and to be the author of the agreed-upon package of legislation that would try to tame the energy crisis monster. During the energy crisis, a variety of options were under consideration. The State of California was trying to get the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to cap the wholesale price of electricity, as that price was far exceeding the statutory limit that regulated utilities in California could charge their retail customers. The wholesale price was far in excess of the retail price because of deregulation. When the legislature deregulated the electricity sector in 1996, it did so by taking a number of statutory actions. One was to create a Power Exchange or PX. This was intended to be the trading floor for buyers and sellers of electricity. Keeley believed that the model was seriously flawed because it assumed that electricity could be treated as a commodity. Commodities markets have several features: Many buyers, many sellers, transparent transactions, substitute products, and the ability of the buyer to withhold buying if the price is not to his or her liking. According to Keeley, the PX had none of these features. In order to stabilize prices, and to assure a reliable supply of electricity, Keeley became the author of the State of California's solution so California participate