The Board of Trustees of the State Bar of California elected Grass Valley City Attorney Michael G. Colantuono Treasurer of the Bar for the 2014–2015 year on July 18th. Colantuono is entering his third year as an appointee of the Speaker of the California Assembly to the Trustees of the State Bar of California, the state agency which regulates the practice of law in California. Colantuono will be sworn in as Treasurer at the Bar’s Annual Conference in San Diego in September.

The State Bar is comprised of some 249,000 attorneys licensed to practice in California and is a public corporation formed under state law. It is within the judicial branch and serves as an arm of the California Supreme Court. The Bar’s missions include:

• To protect the public by ensuring that lawyers and other legal services providers meet the highest standards of competence and ethics.
• To provide services and benefits to meet lawyers’ professional development, business and personal needs.
• To promote access to justice for all Californians regardless of financial means.

The Bar Treasurer leads the Board’s oversight of the finances of the State Bar to protect the public. The Treasurer chairs the Bar’s Audit Committee and Chairs or Vice-Chairs its Planning & Budget Committee. Colantuono said: “I am deeply honored by this vote of confidence. I look forward to working with my fellow Trustees to protect the public, lead the profession, and seek adequate funding for our courts.”

Colantuono and his firm, Colantuono, Highsmith & Whatley, PC, serve Auburn, Barstow, Calabasas, Grass Valley, Lakeport, Sierra Madre and South Pasadena as City Attorney and many other counties, cities and special districts as special counsel. Colantuono is a past president of the City Attorneys Department of the League of California Cities and the State Bar named him the Ronald M. George Public Lawyer of the Year in 2010. The Los Angeles and San Francisco Daily Journal, a trade paper for the legal profession, named Colantuono one of California’s “Top 25 Municipal Lawyers” in each of the last three years.