We had a great meeting in February. In addition to awarding the Tim Fleming Memorial Scholarship and catching up with past Chapter presidents, we welcomed Brad Diede as ACEC-CA’s new Executive Director. Brad spent much of his time soliciting feedback from Chapter members. What is ACEC-CA doing well and what could they be doing better? If you missed the meeting, don’t hesitate to share your opinion about the organization. Please email or call Brad or me. Brad plans to visit as many Chapters as he can before the ACEC-CA conference at the beginning of April so that he has a good sense of ACEC-CA members’ views about the organization. Brad will be reporting back to the Board and to members. Soliciting feedback from Chapter members may have not made for the most interesting of meetings, but it was important. ACEC-CA is about serving member firms and member representatives. If the organization is not serving you, then we need to hear about it. So what is ACEC-CA doing for you? Here are some examples:
February 21st was the last day to introduce bills in the California Legislature. Nearly two thousand or more legislative bills were introduced. ACEC CA is reviewing those bills to determine which may impact the engineering and surveying profession and to develop recommended positions on those bills. ACEC-CA strives to shape, support, or oppose bills to ensure fair treatment of member firms with regards to business and technical issues. An example from last year is AB 401. This bill authorized additional design-build projects in California, which ACEC-CA supports, but contained language that violates Prop 35 (contracting out). Despite ACEC-CA’s efforts to remove the unconstitutional language, the bill was signed into law in October. ACEC-CA has since filed a lawsuit to remove the few words from the law which violates Article XXII of the State Constitution by prohibiting regional agencies from performing construction inspection services on their own or contracting with others for those services. The lawsuit asks that AB 401 be amended to allow local agencies the freedom to choose what is best for them.
One of ACEC-CA’s purposes is to interact with elected officials about interests of its members. I recently met Mark Johannessen while doing yard work at my house. Mark is running for the State Assembly to replace Roger Dickinson (AB7) and wanted to discuss his political views and hear those of voters. The more I chatted with Mark, the more I got the sense that he supports many of the issues supported by ACEC-CA and would work with the both sides of the aisle to advance business issues in the State Assembly. I was able to connect Mark to Kelly Garman, one of our legislative advocates, so that ACEC-CA could evaluate his platform relative to ACEC-CA positions and for possible PAC support. I’ll keep you posted.
