A Message from Chamber President Charlynn Harless:

Three Main Issues Deserve focus

June 2007 -- It seems like just yesterday when I was stressing over assuming the awesome responsibility of President of the Greater Stockton Chamber of Commerce and struggling with the task of writing my first President’s article but as is often the case when looking back, my term as President seems to have just flown by.

During this past year our Board of Directors, CEO Doug Wilhoit and Chamber staff worked diligently to promote the many interests of our diverse business community. We have studied many issues and took action when necessary to communicate the Chamber’s position to policy makers on pending legislation and regulations impacting our business community.

This is my last article as your President; and while there continue to be many opportunities and challenges facing our community, I want to take this opportunity to address three specific issues that are of greatest concern to the Chamber: California’s health care reform initiatives, the proposed use of the Northern California Women’s Facility and the use of local sub-contractors on public projects.

First and foremost, the Chamber remains committed to defeating any health care reform that would minimize an employer’s ability to negotiate compensation packages with his or her employees that the employer deems to be in their best interest, and we will strongly oppose any legislation that simply shifts the cost of insurance coverage to employers. Further, we believe that patients and their health plans must be protected from excessive charges from all multi-hospital organizations and health care provider corporations.

As I have previously reported, the Chamber has established a task force to thoroughly examine all factors driving the current health care crisis and to determine how the Chamber can respond to proposed health care initiatives in a manner that best represents the long term best interest of our business community. The task force is expected to submit its recommendation for action to the Board of Directors by the end of this summer.

The Chamber continues to strongly oppose a proposal to convert the Northern California Women’s Facility into a men’s transition or re-entry facility. Not only are we concerned that this facility would ultimately become a men’s prison, we believe the lack of early, effective intervention for our at-risk youth is as great a crisis, if not more, than the current shortage of prison beds.

For this reason, the Chamber continues to aggressively lobby in support of the San Joaquin County Office of Education’s proposal to use this facility as a non-secure residential career and technical high school for adjudicated adolescent youth. The escalating recidivism rate of our youth into our prison system should not leave any question that the establishment of a program that focuses on basic educational skills and career and technical education is a far superior use of this facility. If we do not take immediate action to circumvent the current rate of the criminal activity of our youth, we will never build enough prison beds.

Finally, San Joaquin County is in the process of awarding a contract to a firm to build the new San Joaquin County Courthouse. This past week several of our members requested the Chamber’s assistance in opposing the County awarding the contract to a firm that will not utilize our local resources.

We have been advised that based on the results of oral interviews, the County is seriously considering awarding the contract to a firm that indicated they do not intend to use local sub-contractors, while the other bidder has guaranteed the use of local sub-contractors and employees. It is inconceivable to the Chamber that the Board of Supervisors would consider any contract that does not promote our local economy.

The Chamber shares our members’ concerns and will oppose contracts that result in tax dollars being paid on public projects that do not require, at a very minimum, the use of a certain percentage of local sub-contractors, suppliers and employees when competitive, experienced, qualified local resources are available.