Mike Levin: “I relied on him every day on a wide variety of issues and on this floor and in committee I miss him every day. When we…”

“I relied on him every day on a wide variety of issues and on this floor and in committee I miss him every day. When we hit a tough question, the answer was, ``Ask Al.'' We expected and received from him a straight, unvarnished answer, and if he did not know the answer and I can remember many days he would say, ``I am not quite sure,'' off he would go to find the information. Al Davis was available with memos, with charts. His documents were so plentiful and useful during debates on taxes that the staff in my office often included in my briefing binders a tab entitled simply ``Al Davis memos.'' I cannot recall a tax debate when so many of us did not rely on some document or some analysis that Al Davis prepared. He was prolific. He analyzed tax bills and budgets upside down and backwards. My tax counsel, who assures me that Al's memos were so valuable that he never deleted a single one, counted 44 memos, charts, and other analysis from Al to the committee from March 1 through May 19 of this year. So many points from these memos were used to help shape important tax and budget debates. He was blessed with the ability to take issues that were complex and numbers even more complex and to explain them in ways that everybody could understand. He hated dishonesty and inaccuracy.”