Regional Chamber Alliance Legislative Summit
Several business leaders from the Regional Chamber Alliance (RCA) traveled to Sacramento in May to attend the CalChamber 2010 Business Summit and to meet with our legislators to discuss the importance of supporting business friendly legislation to California's economic recovery.
During the two-day conference, RCA representatives met with several legislators from our business community. Assemblymembers Tony Mendoza and Charles Calderon, Senators Bob Huff and Ron Calderon. We also met with Dan Carrigg of the League of California Cities as well as Rick Rice, the head of the California Recovery Task Force.
The conference offered the opportunity to listen to former Governor Pete Wilson and Russell Gould, Chairman of the University of California, Board of Regents as they discussed the state's governability. A common theme amongst the entire conference was the importance of balancing the budget without doing it on the backs of our state's business community.
At the Sacramento Host Breakfast, May 18th, speaker Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said, in this time of economic uncertainty, California needs to focus on job creation.
"Job killer" legislation is the last thing California needs, Schwarzenegger said during a question-and-answer session with CalChamber President and CEO Allan Zaremberg at the 85th annual breakfast.
"What we need is to do the opposite, what we need to do is to create jobs," the Governor said. His last year in office is all about "job, jobs, jobs," Schwarzenegger said.
The breakfast, sponsored by the 25-member Sacramento Host Committee and the CalChamber, attracts a statewide audience of hundreds of leaders from business, agriculture, industry, education, government, the military and the consular corps.
Zaremberg pointed out that the Governor has vetoed more than 200 "job killer" bills since taking office in 2003.
Employers Key
In remarks preceding the questions-and-answers with the Governor, Larree Renda, executive vice president of Safeway, Inc. emphasized, "Employers are the bridge to California's future. We are the key to helping our state get back to work."
She called on breakfast attendees to commit to an "ongoing dialogue" with lawmakers.
"We need to tell our lawmakers that we will not look the other way while they vote on over-regulation, and vote on ‘job killing' bills. We need to tell them our expectation is they will work with us-not against us-to put our state back on strong financial footing where it belongs," Renda said.
Budget Reform
The Governor said the private sector should not have to pay for the mistakes made by the Legislature through tax increases that hurt businesses.
"The problem in Sacramento is that they don't understand business that well," he said.
He compared the problem in Sacramento to the lack of leadership in New Orleans leading up to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
"They knew for years that those levees were vulnerable. They knew for years that if a big storm comes it will wipe out the city, but they sat there and they hoped for the best and then what happened was finally Katrina came and wiped out the city. And now the economic decline came worldwide and it wiped out the state of California," Schwarzenegger said.
The Governor has proposed budget reforms, including pension reform. The California pension system has increased from $150 million 10 years ago, to $3 billion today-a 2,000 percent increase, the Governor said. He said he wants to bring that number back to those 1999 levels.
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