CAL SMACNA 2018 ‘Day at the Capitol’ was a Success!

CAL SMACNA 2018 ‘Day at the Capitol’ was a Success!

SACRAMENTO — On February 5th CAL SMACNA kicked-off its 12th ‘Day at the Capitol’ (DAC). 42 CAL SMACNA members traveled to Sacramento with their families, to meet with their Legislative Members and discuss issues important to CAL SMACNA. On Monday evening CAL SMACNA Members attended a Reception with Legislators.

On Tuesday morning attendees gathered to learn about the DAC Issues and hear from Assemblymember Rocky Chavez. CAL SMACNA members met with the offices of 25 Senators and 23 Assemblymembers. That means 48 legislative offices were able to hear about issues important to CAL SMACNA!

A summary of the discussed issues:

Funding for K-12 Career Technical Education

State funding for the Career and Technical Education Incentive Grant program (CTEIG) is set to expire on June 30th. Hundreds of CTE programs across the state rely upon this important revenue stream for continued operations. The Legislature and Governor must re-authorize this program in the FY 2018-19 budget in order to provide continued support to CTE in grades K-12. CAL SMACNA supports AB 1743 (O’Donnell, Burke, Chavez, Cunningham, McCarty, Quirk-Silva, and Thurmond) which would specify that, upon appropriation by the Legislature, $500,000,000 shall be made available to the CTEIG program for the 2018-19, 2019-20, 2020-21 fiscal years.

School Bond Sales and Construction is Stalled in California

California needs to build new schools and modernize existing facilities to meet the educational needs of our state’s children in grades K-12. Proposition 51 was passed by the voters in 2016 authorizing $9.3B in state general obligation bonds to support new construction and modernization of school facilities. The current backlog of State Architect approved funding requests at the Office of Public School Constructions stands at $3.2B. yet the Governor only proposes to support the sales of $640M in FY 2018-19. This small bond sale will only support 20% of existing shovel-ready projects and only 9% of voter authorized work on schools. CAL SMACNA members urged their Legislative members to appropriate an additional $20 million to Item 9600 of the Governor’s Proposed Budget for the purpose of paying school bond debt service for the additional sale of $2.36 billion in bond sales in FY 2018-19.

Healthcare Coverage for Workers on Public Works

California taxpayers benefit when employers provide healthcare coverage to their workers. While current law required construction workers to be paid prevailing wages on public works projects nothing requires any portion of these wages to be used for healthcare coverage. Any lapse in coverage becomes a taxpayer burden. CAL SMACNA supports AB 1080 (Gonzalez-Fletcher), which provides a 5% bid preference in public works for contractors who provide credible healthcare coverage for their employees.

Thank you to the CAL SMACNA Legislative Committee and to every attendee for taking the time to meet with Legislative members, and for making this one of the best DAC events to date!