Policy Watch – August 2010
In this Issue: Meet the 2010 Leaders of the North Bay North Bay Jobs & Prosperity Project Launched The Third Way: Upgrading to Government 3.0 Members in the News
Meet the 2010 Leaders of the North Bay
North Bay Leadership Council announces the five honorees for their annual Leaders of the North Bay Awards, designed to celebrate individuals and organizations from the region that have been positive catalysts for change. The award recipients will be honored at an October 29 luncheon at Embassy Suites Hotel, San Rafael. Best-selling author and research scientist, Dr. Alison Gopnik, will deliver the keynote speech “Getting it Right When It Counts -- In the Beginning! Early Child Development and Education Are Key to Future Success.”
The 2010 Leaders of the North Bay are:
Brett Martinez, President and CEO, Redwood Credit Union
Katie Crecelius, Chair, Novato Housing Coalition
Agilent Technologies, Santa Rosa
Sonoma County Energy Independence Program
Wanda Tapia-Thomsen, Latino Service Providers
The honorees will receive their awards at a luncheon featuring a keynote speech by Alison Gopnik, an internationally recognized leader in the study of children’s learning and development. 2010 is NBLC’s Year of Education, and Gopnik will talk on the importance of early child development and education as foundations for future success. Her books include The Scientist in the Crib (coauthored with Andrew Meltzoff and Patricia Kuhl), and The Philosophical Baby; What Children’s Minds Tell Us about Love, Truth and the Meaning of Life. She has been featured on The Colbert Report, Nova and many NPR programs. A book signing will follow the awards ceremony.
The event will be held at the Embassy Suites on Friday, October 29 from 11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. Tickets are $50 per person or $500 for a table of ten. If you are interested in being a sponsor, please contact info@northbayleadership.org. For more information or to purchase tickets, please visit www.northbayleadership.org
Voting, Jobs and Prosperity
North Bay Jobs & Prosperity Project Launched
What do voting, jobs and prosperity have in common? It turns out a lot. And as we try to cut the 10.4% unemployment that is persisting in Sonoma County, we all can benefit from knowing what those connections are.
Sonoma County has lost 4.7% of its jobs over the past 2 years. This number does not take into account the number of people who have given up looking for work, never entered the workforce (recent high school and college graduates) or been forced to take early retirement because of layoffs and downsizing. With more than one out of every 10 people out of work, we need more jobs in Sonoma County. We need more jobs for the unemployed plus the new people who will enter the workforce as they become of age or move to this County.
When we look at where those jobs may be created, it is important to understand that the jobs we have lost are not coming back. The local economy, like the national economy, has experienced a rebalancing that has forever changed how and where we work. Surprisingly, many elected officials have been slow to respond to these economic realities and have failed to make creating and saving jobs their top priority.
Without jobs, there is no prosperity. So where does voting fit into this equation? There is a strong correlation between economic vitality and civic vitality. In communities where there are high percentages of registered voters and those registered voters vote in most elections, the communities benefit from having active participation in civic life. The benefits derive from voters making informed decisions about what is in their best interests by voting for the candidates who will represent those interests and ballot measures that improve their communities.
Politicians pay more attention to the people who vote than those who don’t. That means political rewards are aligned with political participation. Studies have shown that governmental budgets, which are controlled by elected officials, are allocated to a greater degree to high propensity voting districts/voters than low voter turnout areas. Obviously, the politicians know who is paying attention and who is not. And in turn, those politicians are more attentive to those who put them in, and out, of office.
The lesson is, “If you care about jobs and prosperity, elect people who want to create jobs and increased economic vitality and re-elect officials whose voting record demonstrates job creation and increased economic vitality within their jurisdiction.” Unfortunately, election results show there have been a significant percentage of people NOT participating in elections. According to Pete Golis, in his column in the Press Democrat (June 8, 2010), there are 337,812 local residents eligible by age and citizenship to vote in Sonoma County. However, only 245,136 are registered to vote. This means almost 100,000 people are sitting on the sidelines, not exercising their right to vote, and letting other people make their decisions and reap the rewards.
Of those registered to vote, many don’t bother. The average turnout in a non-Presidential election is between 50 – 60%. That means an additional 125,000 – 150,000 people are not voting most of the time. Total up the non-voters and you can see that approximately a quarter million people in Sonoma County are not civically engaged! And while there are worse statistics in California, these numbers should not be acceptable to any resident of Sonoma County.
They certainly aren’t to us! That is why three organizations -- North Bay Leadership Council Sonoma County Alliance and North Coast Builders Exchange -- have formed the North Bay Jobs and Prosperity Project (NBJPP). NBJPP is a nonpartisan effort to improve voter registration and turnout through highly accessible voter information. The project will work with North Bay employers, starting in Sonoma County, to provide their employees with encouragement to register to vote, registration materials, candidate information and questionnaire results, and ballot measure pros and cons. There will be NO advocacy or endorsements at NBJPP.
We hope the thousands of employees of our mutual members will seize the opportunity to register to vote, thereby gaining a say in making Sonoma County more economically competitive so new jobs are created and existing jobs are saved. We hope that NBJPP spurs a new level of civic vitality that leads to a greater economic vitality. That is why our motto is: “Jobs and the North Bay’s Future Depend on YOUR Vote.” For more information, go to www.NorthBayProsperity.com.
The Third Way: Upgrading to Government 3.0
Rebooting/Restructuring/Reinventing Government
What do you think? Is California going to fail? Many people are worried that it will. They see the decline of our public schools, especially the huge achievement gap for our Latino students. The crumbling of our infrastructure, with billions of dollars needed to bring it up to par, and the state unable to sell bonds to even chip away at the long list of critical projects, making us fall further and further behind. No fix to the Katrina-like threat to our water system in the Delta, which puts two-thirds of the state’s drinking water at risk, deferred yet again to a later date. Unemployment well above the national average and proving intractable. The burst of the housing bubble and fear that we haven’t hit bottom yet. The state’s $19 billion deficit and virtually all of California’s governmental agencies on the brink of fiscal collapse. There is an emerging consensus that California is broken. State government is failing its citizens in education, infrastructure, economy, parks and more. These failures, in turn, cause counties, cities and school districts to slash their own services.
We are two months late adopting a state budget. The California economy isn’t improving. There is a collective sense that our fair state is no longer able to meet the needs of its constituents. From looming fears of a state default on its debt, to the need to issue IOUs to pay bills, and a credit rating below Greece, something is very wrong in the Golden State. What is the solution? Unfortunately, our legislature continues to paint itself into a corner and not look for real solutions. We have Democrats fighting cuts to state programs and services and pushing for tax increases. We have Republicans taking vows to not raise any taxes and pushing back hard for cuts to bring the state budget within its available resources. Tax increases or cuts to programs? Is that the only choice?
No. There is another way. Some call it the third way. Let’s change how we structure government. Move to a new way of delivering essential services that is more cost-effective and based on improved efficiencies. Accept that the system is broken and upgrade to government 3.0.
What does government 3.0 look like?
It looks like government that works, that focuses on its core functions, is leaner, highly productive, and cost-effective. It is 21st Century government, an upgrade from the “broken pipes of 20th Century government, the inefficiency of fragmented jurisdictions and the lack of positive outcomes on the economy. This witches’ brew is made more bitter by state funding shortfalls and red ink as far as the eye can see (Dan Carol, Rebooting 20th Century Government: New Software Needed, NDN Blog, 5/27/10).
In a New York Times article, Hard Times Spur Ideas for Change (May 24, 2010), Monica Davey says, “As states around the country gird for another grim budget year, more leaders have begun to talk not of nipping, not of tucking, but, in essence, of turning government upside down and starting over. Ever growing is the list of states, municipalities and agencies with blue ribbon committees aimed at reconsidering what government should be.” Calling for change, Scott D. Pattison, the executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers, says “We can incrementally hobble and muddle through, or we can stand back and be more strategic.”
Some proposals that have been considered are: in Nebraska, a lawmaker proposed the unthinkable: Cut by half, or more, the 93 counties that have made up the state for generations; Senators in Indiana, aiming to thin the tangled layers there, want to eliminate the system of more than 1,000 township boards; and in Missouri, where lawmakers this spring took a day off for a brainstorming session on how to ‘reboot government,’ there is talk of merging the agencies that oversee secondary and higher education, providing incentives to counties for combining services, even turning to a four-day state workweek.
Citing Michigan as an example of successful change, Davey says “Michigan, a state plagued by budget problems long before everywhere else, has since the early 2000s — a period Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm, a Democrat, recalls as ‘the decade from hell’ —shrunk itself. It dropped a quarter of all state departments and 11,000 workers, closed 8 prisons and 10 prison camps, and drastically decreased funds for services like the arts and dental care for adults. Much of that was accompanied by deep, loud complaint. ‘People have come to expect that government was going to be a certain way,’ Ms. Granholm said, ‘and we’ve had to press the reset button on our economy and our government.’ But for those places resistant to change, still hoping to ride out the hard times for a few more years until flush budgets return, Ms. Granholm is skeptical. ‘People who don’t take advantage of the crisis to cross over to a new model,’ she said, ‘are wasting the crisis.’”
As Dan Carol says, “we need to fix the federal-state-local economic development pipeline to water the right beanfields, do more for less, and effectively engage the private sector to deliver job growth for everyday Americans. While tempting, we can’t just be China for a day and “decide” to put in 42 high speed rail systems overnight – and simply ignore nasty ‘not in my backyard’ local siting concerns and pesky Congressional ‘pay-as-you-go’ rules that stall smart infrastructure investments. Nor can we just expect entrenched interests to graciously stand aside as we propose eliminating agencies and programs in a political flourish. No offense to the heroic reformers in the Times piece who had all tried and failed to re-arrange government in dramatic new ways (eg, cutting Nebraska’s number of counties in half, eliminating 1,000 township boards in Indiana), but overcoming 20th Century government and creating new bottom-up innovation won’t succeed by re-arranging the hardware of government on a white board.”
Carol calls for “new thinking and collaborative software to effectively re-wire our economic circuitry.” Below is his plan to do just that:
In policy layman’s terms, a basic strategy to modernize federal-state-local systems would:
- Enable bottom up business plans -- not big guvment.
- Create “go-fast” job-creation centers across the country to accelerate the deployment of a new, public-private pipeline for economic development and help America leapfrog past obsolete and silo’ed 20th Century systems.
- Charter, fund and deploy a new generation of “distributed finance institutions” (DFIs) to drive our economic transition and directly support small-scale business and sustainable infrastructure projects with less federal red-tape.
- Engage trillions in untapped union and public pension fund assets through federal credit enhancements to drive deep job creation and small business investment long after the federal stimulus runs out.
- Focus on manufacturing opportunities (which studies show indirectly creates more jobs in a community than service jobs) through new incentives for local in-sourcing of key supply chains.
- End top-down decision-making by just a few officials in Washington DC and empower front-line regional leaders through performance- and outcome-based budgeting.
- Enable local and state innovation through web 2.0 tools and technical assistance. EDA’s KnowYourRegion.gov site is a great step in that direction.
Carol’s vision includes the need “to track which innovations and experiments are delivering the best results. To lift up and scale the top approaches, we might consider adding one more commission to a growing list. A Bottom Up Innovation Commission could identify the most promising reforms, implementation mechanisms and tough choices ahead for 21st century government, much like the successful base-closing commission. One surprising co-chair to throw in the hopper: Tom Brokaw, whose surprising piece last year called for ‘cutting anachronistic and expensive local government structure that dates to horse-drawn wagons, family farms and small-town convenience.’”
Davey found others who agree with that statement. “Scott Walker, county executive of Milwaukee County in Wisconsin -- who has, improbably enough, suggested the possibility of eliminating county government — concurs. ‘It’s reached the point where the public is already there,’ said Mr. Walker. ‘Our elected officials need to be willing to take that next step.’ And some, like Granholm, have. In Massachusetts, a pile of transportation agencies were transformed into one last year. In Missouri, lawmakers agreed to merge the state’s water patrol with its highway patrol (saving about $1 million a year) and to stop printing copies of the state’s “blue book” guide to politics and statutes (saving $1.7 million). Cities are contracting with other cities for programs and services like police and fire, pool maintenance, libraries, etc. Other agencies are contracting out with private companies like Novato Sanitary District did for the operation and maintenance of its new wastewater treatment plant.
There is a way to have a government that works for the people it serves beyond raising taxes and making cuts. We need to not waste this fiscal crisis and use it to spur innovation in reinventing our government to match our needs and our pocketbooks. With government working with the people, not against them, we will increase economic competitiveness, stop the erosion of public education, fix our infrastructure and stop our state from failing all of us.
Members in the News
The Buck Institute for Age Research (Buck) has entered into a research collaboration with BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc. to evaluate therapeutic approaches for treatment of early onset Familial Alzheimer’s Disease, a dominant form of Alzheimer’s disease that typically presents at 30 – 65 years of age and is an orphan disorder with a prevalence of approximately 34,000 in the US. Targeting it represents a good strategic fit with BioMarin’s core competencies in developing protein-based therapeutics for rare genetic diseases. BioMarin has agreed to fund a joint research collaboration for up to two years with the Buck and the Bredesen laboratory.
Sutter Health’s planned $284 million hospital next to Wells Fargo Center for the Arts north of Santa Rosa has been approved by the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors. The first phase of construction is set to start Oct. 1 and will be 80,000 square feet of medical office buildings.
Medtronic CardioVascular will install a $1.2 million solar array at its Fountaingrove campus. The 324-kilowatt system, scheduled to be completed by next summer, is expected to reduce the electrical demand of Medtronic’s largest Santa Rosa facility by 40 percent at peak hours and realize net savings of approximately $1.8 million over 20 years. NBLC member, SolarCraft, will install the system. In 2009 and 2010, Medtronic received an Environmental Sustainability Best Practices Award from Sonoma County’s Business Environmental Alliance.
Kaiser Permanente San Rafael and Santa Rosa were recognized as Gold Plus Achievement Award recipients by the American Heart Association. To receive the Gold Plus distinction, the Kaiser Permanente Primary Stroke Centers at these medical centers met or exceeded performance achievement and quality measure criteria set by the American Heart/American Stroke Association for the award. The American Heart Association’s Gold Plus Award demonstrates Kaiser Permanente’s commitment to stroke care for its members and patients. Additionally, both the San Rafael and Santa Rosa medical centers are certified Primary Stroke Centers by The Joint Commission. Stroke is the third leading cause of death in the United States and a leading cause of serious, long-term disability. On average, someone suffers a stroke every 45 seconds.
Cornish & Carey Commercial is merging its 13 real estate brokerage offices, including two new ones in the North Bay, with Newmark Knight Frank, a New York-based commercial real estate brokerage and advisory. As of Sept. 7, Cornish & Carey Commercial’s offices will be known as Cornish & Carey Commercial Newmark Knight Frank and will end its affiliation with the Oncor International network of commercial real estate brokerages.
North Bay Business Journal selected 55 businesses and organizations as honorees in its fifth-annual Best Places to Work in the North Bay. The winners were selected from nearly 100 nominees by the Business Journal editorial department based on several criteria, including the results of an anonymous employee survey and a company application that provided information on issues such as diversity, benefits and community involvement. The companies range in size from 20 employees – the minimum required – to 4,500. Congratulations to the following NBLC members who are being honored:
First Time Winner:
Codding Enterprises
Second Time Winner:
Woodruff Sawyer & Co.
Fifth Time Winners:
Kaiser Permanente Santa Rosa & San Rafael Medical Centers
Redwood Credit Union
About NBLC:
Twenty years ago, business leaders founded the North Bay Leadership Council on a simple premise: We can accomplish more by working together. Today, the Council includes over 33 leading employers in the North Bay. Our members represent a wide variety of businesses, non-profits and educational institutions, with a workforce in excess of 20,000. As business and civic leaders, our goal is to promote sound public policy, innovation and sustainability to make our region a better place to live and work. For more information please call 707.283.0028 or visit us at http://www.northbayleadership.org/.