On Tuesday, November 6 we have a huge opportunity to make a significant difference in the political landscape of the state by voting YES on Proposition 32. Please take the opportunity to tell all of your friends and neighbors how important this issue is and what a difference it will make to the future of the State of California

The following information from the “Yes on 32” campaign is an overview of the purpose and goals of Proposition 32.

• Removes special interest money from politics: Corporations and unions are spending millions of dollars in Sacramento. We need to cut off campaign contributions so politicians will pay attention to the voters instead of catering to the special interests.
• Bans direct corporate and union contributions to candidates: Federal law has had this ban for over 100 years and many other states currently do as well. Proposition 32 favors contributions from individuals and constituents. If it had been in place in 2010, well over $35 million in corporate contributions would have been wiped out.
• Prevents corporations from spreading their money across the entire state Legislature and maintaining control regardless of who is elected. According to the LA Times, AT&T has contributed to every single sitting state legislator and they’re not alone. During the 2010 elections, BSNF Rail spent $295,000, covering 75% of legislative races and PG&E spread $480,000 across 72% of races.
• Bans contributions from government contractors to elected officials who control contracts awarded to them: The practice of “pay to play”, where contributors are rewarded by contracts occurs at all levels of government. Plain and simple, it’s a bribe and perception of corruption has no place in how tax dollars are spent.
• Bans payroll deductions by corporations, unions, and government employers of money to be used for politics: Preserves every employee’s right to contribute to campaigns by means other than payroll deduction (for example, by check or by monthly debit from an account or credit card), but ensures that those contributions are voluntarily authorized by the employee in writing annually.
• Assures that all political contributions are voluntary: Individual union members are free to directly support the candidate of their choice or contribute voluntarily to their union’s PAC. Employees of large corporations are free to directly support the candidate of their choice, or contribute voluntarily to the company’s PAC.
• Implements reforms evenhandedly, applying each provision to both corporations and unions: These fair and simple reforms reduce the influence of special interests across the board. Read it for yourself.

For more information, please go to: www.YesProp32.com

ACEC Sierra Chapter leadership recently paid a visit to U.S. Congresswoman Doris Matsui, who represents California’s 5th District. Eddie Kho (Morton & Pitalo), Steve Greenfield (Cunningham Engineering), and Stephen Boll (Kleinfelder) met with the Congresswoman to discuss three things, infrastructure, infrastructure, and infrastructure!

District 5 currently covers Sacramento, yet Congresswoman Matsui noted that the most significant change with the redistricting, which will take effect with the upcoming 2012 election, is the addition of the City of West Sacramento. Her focus will be the importance of the Sacramento River as a regional amenity and the need for improving access between the two river cities. She acknowledged that West Sacramento has done a great job focusing their attention along the river with the River Walk and the Bridge District and she will be encouraging Sacramento to do the same. She is a strong supporter of two additional bridges over the river and believes that one of them would be ideally located connecting to Broadway on the Sacramento side.

Given that her district office at the Robert T. Matsui¹ Federal Courthouse Building has an excellent view of the Sacramento Railyards project, our discussion then moved to the importance of urban infill projects. The infrastructure needs associated with such projects including flood protection and utility/roadway improvements will continue to be a challenge as our community density grows. Congresswoman Matsui was also very interested in local trends associated with sustainable developments and green energy projects. She wants Sacramento to become a Global Leader in Clean Energy Technology. As part of her commitment, she has introduced several bills to promote clean energy jobs and manufacturing in our region.

Congresswoman Doris Matsui has been a Champion of Infrastructure since she won a special election in 2005 for her late husband’s open seat. Many of the flood control projects in our region have been a direct result of her efforts and success in securing funding for the Sacramento Region. The message on the importance of Federal infrastructure funding for our region was clearly embraced by the congresswoman and she indicated that, although she has to pick her battles wisely due to federal earmark limitations, she will certainly bring that message to Washington in the coming years.

¹Robert Takeo Matsui, late husband of Congresswoman Doris Matsui served in the House of Representatives from 1979-2005)

Ms. Barbara Hayes, President & CEO of SACTO (Sacramento Commerce and Trade Organization), gave a lively and informative presentation on SACTO’s mission and purpose in our region. Ms. Hayes explained that SACTO was created nearly 40 years ago as a spin-off from the Metro Chamber with the specific mission of marketing and recruitment to attract and keep businesses in our region. Ms. Hayes told several fascinating stories that provided a behind the scenes picture of what is involved in recruiting companies to locate or expand in our region.

She and SACTO were heavily involved in the recruitment and competition to convince Sutter Medical to locate their new back office facility in Roseville. Sutter’s decision to put this major facility in Roseville was recently announced and will initially provide up to 1000 well-paid jobs, with the potential for over 3000 jobs within a few years. There was an enthusiastic Q & A session following Ms. Hayes presentation. Attendees enjoyed learning about SACTO’s mission and the excellent work they do to maintain and improve the vitality of our local economy.

Our speaker this month will be Mr. David Thomas, the Director of the Joint Federal Programs Office (JFPO) with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Sacramento District. Mr. Thomas champions the collective partnership between the Corps and its mission stakeholders from the Bureau of Reclamation, the Sacramento Area Flood Control Agency, the California Department of Water Resources, Central Valley Flood Protection Board and two U.S. Congressional members. Mr. Thomas’ mission covers program, project and construction management coupled with engineering design across three major projects valued at $1 billion.

The Folsom Joint Federal Project, consisting of a six-gated control structure, a 2100-foot spillway with a stilling basin, and an approach channel in the reservoir leading to the control structure, is one of the largest ongoing projects in the Corps. This project will improve the ability to manage large flood events by allowing more water to be safely released earlier in a storm event and leaving more storage capacity in the reservoir to hold back the peak inflow when it arrives. Mr. Thomas will present an overview of the project and address some of the project challenges.

Assuming that our awesome newsletter editor (Lisa Thut, now with Blackburn Consulting) pulls it off, this will be hitting your email inbox just on the brink of the 2012 Election. Or, if you are like me, always a day or two behind on email messages (shhhh, don’t tell the boss!) the election will already be over. Hooray, the barrage of political advertisements is done!

If the election hasn’t happened yet, please make sure you vote. I am a firm believer that you have no right to complain about your representatives if you didn’t exercise your right to vote.

The good news is that even if your candidate didn’t win, or if a key proposition didn’t pass, the economy tends to pick up after an election as “certainty” returns. The policies that come forth from new federal, state, and local governing bodies may not look rosy, but a business can strategically move forward once leadership knows the rules and the players. Perhaps that is true, but on the other hand the economy typically improves due to the pending Holiday retail bump! Regardless, I’ll go out on a limb and predict that 2013 will be better economically than 2012.

Hopefully an improving economy means that we’ll be growing our engineering ranks soon. Your Sierra Chapter has stayed amazingly strong over the last four years, holding our membership at 85+ firms, one of the largest in the State. I hope that number will grow over the year as the economy in Sacramento slowly improves. But what really keeps an organization strong is growth from within, specifically from the next generation of leaders. Thus, I urge you to invite one of your up and coming leaders to our November Dinner meeting. We have planned a great program on the Folsom Dam Spillway project (see post) to entice their attendance, it will provide them an opportunity to network and us an opportunity to expose them to ACEC’s mission. And hopefully they’ll get to join us in a post-election celebration!