August 5, 2009

CCS Partners Preparing Next Steps; Task Force to Meet August 17

Dear summit participants,

Thank you for your participation in the Local Government Summit on State Governance and Fiscal Reform. It was an extraordinary event, with 545 local leaders coming together to create the energy for making change. The CCS Partnership – California School Boards Association, League of California Cities, and California State Association of Counties – are now moving forward to lay the foundation for our next steps. This is the first of what will be regular updates to support you in your efforts to rebuild California.
 
Now that the summit is over, the hard work really begins. It is imperative that we capitalize on the momentum created last month, and turn it into a real movement consisting of school, city and county leaders to achieve the reforms that are essential to the long-term success of our state. Over the course of the past two weeks, staff and facilitators met to share impressions from their own breakout sessions, and brainstorm about next steps – for the summit attendees, the Joint CCS Task Force on State Budget and Fiscal Reform, and the three CCS partner Associations. Staff is now compiling the raw data from the breakout session reports and synthesizing it into a document which reflects the issues on which there was consensus. This report will be shared in a future update.

Based on the input of the facilitators, there was agreement on two fronts:

• Even though there was wide support for “protect local revenues” as a concept, the conversations within each breakout group varied widely. In some groups, there was strong support for bold, broad major reform.  In other groups, the approach was more “piecemeal,” and in others the conversation included elements of both strategies.
  
  
• There is a great frustration with (and anger directed at) the Legislature, and even though the amount of time spent by individual groups on the “legislative reform” topics varied widely, there seems to be a groundswell of support for reforms directed at the legislative process (term limits, partisanship, reapportionment, etc.).

The Joint Task Force will meet again on August 17, and begin to develop a “roadmap to reform” based on the breakout session conversations and areas of consensus. As summer turns to fall, we anticipate a great amount of activity on this front. 

Stay tuned!

For easy access, CSBA has assembled summit handouts, presentations, resources and press coverage on our dedicated summit Web site. 

The summit’s closing call to action delivered by Jim Madaffer, Immediate Past President of the League of California Cities is available in its entirety on CSBA’s YouTube site. 

Please e-mail Marguerite Noteware if you have questions, ideas or concerns. We will continue to send you updates on a regular basis.