Today, the State of California spends billions of dollars a year to comply with unfunded federal mandates.  The Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Homeland Security Act contain just a few of the tens of thousands of regulations imposed on our state and local governments. More than 12% of California’s state budget goes toward paying for compliance with unfunded or underfunded mandates.

California, for example, is required by the Clean Water Act, to designate the uses of water, develop water quality criteria to protect those uses, monitor the condition of waters, and report on water quality every two years. As authorized by the Clean Water Act, the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Permit Program controls water pollution by regulating point sources that discharge pollutants into waters flowing into lakes, rivers, reservoirs and the Bay. Since its introduction in 1972, the NPDES Program has been responsible for significant improvements to our State’s water quality.

Despite billions in cuts in the current federal government to programs statewide for services such as for law enforcement, fire and other first responder agencies, there have been no cuts to unfunded federal mandates. Cities and counties across California have, and are, continuing to seek alternative funding to meet these requirements. In Lake County there is the “Clean Water Act Fee”, in San Mateo County vehicle registration fees were increased to address stormwater pollution issues associated with vehicles and transportation infrastructure.  As California continues to recover from the worst economy since the great depression we will continue to be responsible for protecting our waterways and to pay for this, expect municipalities to impose taxes, fees and assessments to keep our waterways clean and municipal budgets further from the red.

Republicans will be startled to see Democrats on their ballot. Democrats will be shocked to see GOP candidates. The top two vote-getters will advance to November, regardless of party.

So when Californians enter voting booths for November’s general election, they might have a choice between a Republican and a Republican — or a Democrat and a Democrat. And they most likely won’t have a chance to pick a Green, Libertarian or other third-party candidate; those candidates probably won’t have made it onto the November ballot.

Some say the “top two” system will create a new breed of pragmatic, moderate California politicians more concerned about the commonweal than partisan zeal. Others predict it will only make primaries more chaotic — and perhaps more Machiavellian.

Either way, expect a lot of head-scratching as California takes its new system for its first full ride this year — and prepare for years of debate about whether it’s working as intended.

“Long term, I think, it’s going to be healthy — it’s going to eliminate these kinds of races that have no real race and instead create a little more competition, although we’ll see that a little more in November than we do in June,” said veteran Democratic campaign strategist Larry Tramutola, of Oakland.

“But are we going to

all of a sudden get better-quality candidates running? I don’t know. It may take a while for that to happen,” he said.

Former Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado, a moderate Republican, is most responsible for this brave new political world. He was so tired of the old party-based primary election system that in 2009, when he was the Central Coast’s state senator, he agreed to vote for temporary taxes if the Democratic-controlled Legislature would put his proposal on the ballot. Democrats took the deal, and 54 percent of voters in November 2010 approved Proposition 14.

The new system affects neither the presidential election, in which California is part of a national system, nor local elections for city council members and county supervisors, because those jobs are already nonpartisan.

In other races, Maldonado predicted, “it’s going to change the behavior of the candidates. Already, I chuckle when I see these news releases: All of a sudden they’re bipartisan, they’ve worked across the aisle.

“Every candidate has to talk to everybody,” said Maldonado, who’s now running for a Central Coast congressional seat. “You can’t just talk to that little 12 percent on the left or that 12 percent on the right anymore.”

But critics call it a crapshoot — something that sounds great in theory but will prove dangerously unpredictable in the real world.

“This is the type of dynamic that allowed someone like David Duke in Louisiana to get into a runoff for the governor’s race,” said election-reform advocate Steven Hill, citing the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard’s 1991 candidacy. “We’re going to see results like that, all over the map with no rhyme or reason.”

He offers this scenario: If several moderate candidates from the same major party split the vote and essentially cancel out one another, a fringe candidate with a small but dedicated following can slip past them into the top two.

There’s little doubt that some districts in the state’s most liberal areas, including the Bay Area, will send two Democrats onward to November’s ballot, while some conservative areas will send two Republicans.

Candidates can choose whether to state a party preference on the ballot. So, in some cases, voters might not know who’s a Republican and who’s a Democrat.

California Chamber of Commerce President Allan Zaremberg, a top-two supporter, said no matter a candidate’s party preference, “you’re truly going to represent your entire district” if you want to win. And independents and third-party candidates will have a wider audience to appeal to, he said.

But Ed Costantini, a retired UC Davis political science professor, argues the new system actually narrows voters’ choices by virtue of the fact “that there are only two possibilities in the general election” — with no option for write-ins and little hope for third parties.

Hill, co-founder of the nonprofit FairVote, said the new system will also be the death knell for California’s “minor” parties. He said it will be almost impossible for third-party candidates to get into the top two, making them invisible in November and thus making it harder to maintain the minimum registration needed to remain “qualified” by the Secretary of State’s Office. Without that, the parties can’t even put presidential candidates on the ballot.

“It’s possible we could see a lot of the minor parties wiped out within a few years,” Hill said.

Some believe the revolution will result in the same old, same old.

“In 95 percent of the cases you’re going to have the exact same outcome,” said Matt Barreto, a University of Washington political science professor who directs an annual nonpartisan opinion poll of that state’s registered voters. Washington approved a top-two system in 2004, although court battles delayed its use until 2008.

Gonzaga University economist John Beck co-authored a study that found Washington’s top-two system reduced the likelihood of having multiple Democrats in a race but didn’t significantly affect Republicans. A possible explanation, he said, is “that the Democratic Party gave more money to legislative candidates than the Republican Party, and that might’ve given them some leverage for discouraging people from running.”

So a system billed as broadening voter choice might instead encourage more backroom vetting of who’s on the ballot to begin with.

California Democratic Party Chairman John Burton said he has “never seen it work where someone who really wanted to run for office got bogarted out of running by the party or big labor.” But he does believe the system will cost candidates more money, making them more susceptible to special interests’ influence, while disenfranchising third parties.

“It’s the dumbest (expletive) thing the state Legislature has done in 175 years,” Burton said.

And that, he said, is really saying something.

- Josh Richman covers politics for the Bay Area News Group. Follow him at Twitter.com/josh_richman. Read the Political Blotter at IBAbuzz.com/politics.

What happens next? Confusion. On January 30, the League of California Cities sent a letter to Governor Brown asking him to support clean-up legislation that would help resolve difficulties in the new law. The major concerns described in the detailed eight-page letter include:

• Possible bond defaults

• Loss of taxpayer funds

• Possible violations of federal law

• Stranded public infrastructure projects

• Loss of critical staff to implement law

Hopefully, the sub issues under each major topic can be resolved before major problems arise. While the confusion is understandable when legislation is changed frequently up the last minute, the situation is not acceptable. In response, two rating agencies either downgraded or put a negative outlook on all California redevelopment bonds until conditions stabilize.

The letter does not touch on one of the greatest impacts of the new legislation, the loss of funds for affordable housing. The twenty percent of all redevelopment revenue, equal to about $1 billion annually, that was set aside for housing just went away. Housing advocates have as many questions about the new law as do those who focus on economic development. Many people in Sacramento profess to support affordable housing and legislation was introduced to make up the loss of RDA funds. However, those bills are in their early stages and the outcome is uncertain.

There is also talk in Sacramento of creating new funding sources for economic development. Again, however, the outcome is uncertain and, given the state’s fiscal situation, any state funding for such efforts is likely to be small. Instead, there may be initiatives to allow local residents to tax themselves to support economic development.

Compared to other redevelopment issues statewide, Lafayette’s RDA was small and straightforward. In addition to supporting affordable housing, most of our redevelopment funds went into two major projects. The first is a new Veterans Memorial Building created in partnership with veterans’ organizations, Contra Costa County and the City of Walnut Creek. Most of our funds were committed to the building of the Lafayette Library and Learning Center. We have only two public-private agreements that require on-going funding and we transferred all staff out of the redevelopment agency last year.

As expected under redevelopment law, our agency used debt to build the two focal projects. That debt, with the exception of the loans made from the City to the RDA that were outlawed by the legislation, must be repaid with the funds that would have gone to redevelopment. As a result, all funding for the next several years will go to debt repayment. The taxing entities that were supposedly the beneficiaries of the dissolution of redevelopment will receive almost nothing during the next several years. Redevelopment agencies statewide told Sacramento that this would be the result of their proposal, but they were ignored.

The prologue of the dissolution of redevelopment exists.  The next chapters are waiting to be written.

-Don Tatzin, Lafayette City Council

Elected officials vary from being very good to being absolutely terrible. Even the most committed well-intended struggle through their first term of elected office trying to do the best they can. Virtually all elected officials go through a steep learning curve that seems overwhelming. Many will admit privately that when they were first elected, they were ill prepared for the demands of office.

A year after being elected to office a former client confided to me that she was frustrated and overwhelmed with the challenges of elective office. She was intelligent, hardworking and had been a very good candidate. “I had no idea what I was getting into,” she told me. “Somebody ought to write a book about what it is like to go from candidate to elected official.”

That conversation started me on a path to see what resources existed that could help her and other local office holders. The more I looked, the more I was disappointed. While there are hundreds, if not thousands, of books and articles providing advice on how to get elected, there is relatively little information about being effective once elected.

I was surprised how many other elected officials also expressed doubts and frustrations about their own effectiveness. They talked about the lack of support, training and mentoring they received, saying they came into office ill equipped for the job they were elected to do.  They want to do a good job. They want help. They told me they wanted something straightforward and easy to read that could help them think through professional and personal conflicts they were facing. City managers and superintendents wanted a guide they could use to help newly elected officials transition from being candidates to effective members of an elected board.

I originally thought this book could be of help to anyone at any level of elected office. Unfortunately, I quickly discovered that while there is a lot of attention on national elections and members of Congress and the Senate, most of the people who get elected to Congress or offices at the national level are, by the time they are able to successfully run for these offices, so compromised, conflicted or controlled by the political parties or other interests, that no advice to them could be helpful.

The focus of this book is local elected officials for it is at the local level, where most of us interact with government — through services like police, fire and 911 calls, through zoning rules and regulations, through public schools, street cleaning, parks, libraries and community colleges, and through paying local taxes, fees and fines. The people who choose to serve the public at the local level – school boards, community college boards, city councils and hospital boards, and others are critical to well functioning and healthy communities and to our democracy. The quality of our communities and our system of government depends on quality people running for and getting elected to these offices and being effective once they get elected.

Since we rarely elect “perfect leaders”, our democratic system is structured so that ordinary, even flawed people can be successful, if they work at it. The goal of the book is not an attempt to make people perfect, but rather to inspire, challenge and offer some practical advice.

One of the elected officials who reviewed an early version of this book said it was filled with a lot of helpful “common sense.” This book centers on common sense because I have seen that too often, elected officials operate without it or they lose it once they take office.

How many times have we all wondered, “How could these people ever have been elected?” The truth is that elected officials are flawed just like the rest of us. But with effort, study and hard work they can be better. Following the advice in this book will help.

-Larry Tramutola

SAN FRANCISCO — When broker-dealers give money to California school bond campaigns, it appears to be money well spent.

A review of campaign finance records by The Bond Buyer found a nearly perfect correlation between broker-dealer contributions to California school bond efforts in 2010 and their underwriting subsequent bond sales.

The review found only one instance when a broker-dealer didn’t handle the bond sale after making a contribution to a political action committee advocating a successful school-bond measure. In that case, the business went to a firm that gave more, a review of disclosure filings with the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board found.

Such contributions are not illegal, but they raise questions for some that regulations may need to be updated to prevent “pay-to-play” conflicts of interest.

In 2009, the MSRB elected not to restrict broker-dealer contributions to bond ballot campaigns as part of its Rule G-37, saying there was not enough evidence to show firms were being awarded underwriting business after helping to fund the measures. Instead, it required broker-dealers to disclose such contributions in filings to the MSRB beginning in February 2010. California voters approved 61 of the 83 school bond measures on the ballot in 2010, a passage rate of 74%.

According to the MSRB filings, underwriters contributed more than $700,000 to 41, or 67%, of those elections, all of which resulted in negotiated bond issues. Other successful bond elections resulted in competitive bond sales, in which the underwriter is not selected in advance.

Ten other negotiated sales by school districts also took place in 2010 without any disclosure of corresponding contributions by broker-dealers. Negotiated deals typically result in higher underwriter fees.

The California school bond measures linked to broker-dealer contributions approved in 2010 resulted in an estimated $3.85 billion of bond authorizations, resulting in around $1.2 billion of debt issued. Every time but once, the records showed, when a broker-dealer contributed to a bond referendum that passed, it ended up as lead manager or co-manager.

Piper Jaffray, De La Rosa, Stone & Youngberg, George K. Baum and RBC Capital Markets all lead negotiated school bond transactions after contributing to election campaigns, a review of MSRB records found.

Broker-dealers that commented for this story say they are hired before they give any money to a campaign. They said financial advisors and bond counsel firms generally give more and are not required to disclose campaign contributions to the MSRB.

Other companies, such as construction firms, typically give more to the bond campaigns, but they are subject to a bid process overseen by a committee.

George K. Baum vice chairman Robert Dalton said it’s the policy of the firm to donate if asked by an independent campaign committee, not the school district, and only if the firm had already been hired as an underwriter.

“We do not make campaign contributions to influence the hiring decision,” Dalton said in a statement. “Our underwriting contracts with our school district clients are most often entered into six months to a year before the bond election is called.”

Dalton’s comments mirrored those by other broker-dealers.

The only firm not selected to underwrite a bond sale after giving money to a ballot measure committee was Stone & Youngberg, after it contributed $10,000 to West Contra Costa Unified School District’s Measure D, a $380 million bond referendum. Piper Jaffray was the lead manager on the district’s subsequent $100 million sale last November, after giving $25,000, according to disclosure documents filed by the firm to the MSRB.

A spokesperson for Piper Jaffray contacted for comment pointed to the firm’s internal policy stating it will not make any financial contribution as a condition of being retained as an underwriter. The firm didn’t comment further.

An investment banker who declined to be identified said the truth about school bond elections in California is that money is needed to pay for ballot measures.

“We want to support our clients and the unfortunate reality in California is to do a voter outreach program it takes resources,” the banker said. “This is what happens in California. In an ideal world you wouldn’t need all this stuff.”

PAY TO PLAY

Glenn Byers, assistant treasurer for Los Angeles County, along with county Treasurer Mark Saladino, has been challenging some school districts in the county over their bond issuance practices. He said pay to play is endemic.

“It is a glorified version of pay to play,” said Byers. “These people are not going to be contributing the money if they are not going to be standing in line to then work on the bond transaction. I don’t know of a single instance where someone gave money and didn’t work on the bond transaction.”

While the state government regulates campaign contributions, it cannot limit donations to referendum campaigns because of a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, according to Robert Stern, an expert of California campaign finance law. “It is not common knowledge, but it is not unusual and clearly it’s not illegal,” he said.

When the MSRB changed its Rule G-37 to require underwriters to disclose their contributions to ballot measures in 2009, it did not adopt stricter regulations advocated by Citi, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan. Those firms argued that G-37’s restrictions on contributions to referendums should mirror existing strict limits on broker-dealer contributions to issuer officials and should cover banks, municipal finance professionals and associated political action committees, as well as broker-dealers.

Stratford Shields, a Morgan Stanley managing director, wrote in a comment letter to the MSRB that when an underwriter contributes to a bond campaign and is then selected for the resulting negotiated deal, it gives the impression of pay-to-play. Morgan Stanley has discontinued its contributions to bond campaigns.

Rule G-37 was created to restrict contributions by firms to the campaigns of politicians who could influence the selection of financial firms.

Aside from school bond campaigns, underwriters and other industry players also have contributed to parcel-tax measures for school districts.

In 2009, the rulemaking board said it was premature to extend the rule to restrict contributions to ballot campaigns because there was not enough evidence to show firms were being awarded business based on the contributions.

No action has been taken since.

MSRB executive director Lynnette Kelly said the board has no current plans to amend Rule G-37. “However, we continue to look at all issues in the market where pay-to-play activities may be occurring,” she said in an emailed statement.

Christopher Taylor, who served as executive director of the MSRB from 1978 to 2007, said the Securities and Exchange Commission has in the past pushed the board to fix the problem of choosing broker-dealers for reasons other than expertise.

“Virtually everyone who was on the board when I was executive director understood there was almost a one-to-one correlation — maybe you couldn’t prove it, but certainly there was a pretty strong connection because the issue kept arising,” Taylor said. “School districts were openly soliciting that and making it clear that contributions would play a role in their choosing the underwriter.”

Voters in the West Contra Costa School District in June 2010 approved one of the largest K-12 bond measures in California in that year, a $380 million authorization approved by 62% of the electorate. The first sale from that authorization was a $100 million deal in November of last year handled by Piper Jaffray as the lead.

The district paid the underwriters a $450,000 fee for the issuance, according to the official statement for the sale.

The underwriter also had a history working on other bond sales for the district. After its $25,000 contribution before the June 2010 election, Piper also underwrote a $27.5 million deal issued under a 2005 bond measure, and underwrote an $85 million refunding deal in August 2011.

The firm also served as lead manager on $161 million general obligation bond sale in 2009, which appears to be the first negotiated deal done by the district after it previously had done competitive sales.

Piper Jaffray’s $25,000 contribution was only a fraction of the money raised for the bond election campaign, according to county election records; the majority came from construction and architectural firms.

Sheri Gamba, associate superintendent of business at the school district, said the process for selecting underwriters and others for bond sales includes a request for proposals, interviews and a selection “matrix.”

Gamba said underwriters are chosen by the administration and the bond deals are later approved by the board. Piper was first selected by the school district in 2009 and has been the lead on each deal since.

She said the district’s financial advisor, KNN Financial, helped them with the process, including picking underwriters and negotiating the best fees. KNN also made political contributions in 2010 to the district, but only for a parcel tax measure, according to filings. The advisor is required to disclose campaign contributions because it is owned by Zions First National Bank.

While school districts normally have a committee to oversee the use of bond proceeds, they typically have no third-party oversight for selecting financial firms.

Piper, deal co-manager De La Rosa and KNN Financial also gave money, along with contractors and architects, to a summer study program for district students.

The process used to select underwriters is usually smoke and mirrors, said Joe Canciamilla, a former state Assembly member who sponsored legislation to try to bring more transparency to school bond elections.

In 2005, Canciamilla proposed a bill that would have required school districts selling new-money general obligation bonds to use competitive bidding, in an effort to bring more transparency to the process. He described a typical negotiated bond deal.

“Basically you would have a financial firm come and say we will help with setting up the campaign, help find a consultant if you need one and then we will do the issuance when it is all said and done,” said Canciamilla, who was a member of the Pittsburg Unified School District board before winning a state Assembly seat in 2000. “Obviously, all of those upfront costs and expenses are rolled into the cost of the deal — it is not rocket science to figure it out.”

He said $50,000 to $75,000 would likely swing an election in an average-sized district, while noting that it is difficult to find people to contribute to a measure that raises costs for taxpayers.

During his research for the bills, Canciamilla said he found many instances where broker-dealers charged the school districts much higher fees for deals compared to typical bond issues. He said districts, whose officials often lacked a solid understanding of bond financing, selected underwriters they knew.

LOBBYING AGAINST CHANGE

When the opposition “leveled both shotgun barrels” at his bill by hiring lobbyists, Canciamilla said he knew he was on the right track. One of the main opponents was the California Public Securities Association, the lobbying group for the state’s public finance industry.

Canciamilla’s bill died in committee in 2005 but returned in a heavily watered-down version the next year, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed it. The final version only requires a school board to adopt a formal resolution before a bond sale stating the method of sale and the reason for the choice. After a bond sale, the board is required to disclose the actual cost of the sale at a public meeting.

Term limits ended Canciamilla’s Assembly tenure in 2006. Since then, a few lawmakers have taken up the cause of trying to stop financial firms from providing money or support to a bond campaign and then working on the deal, but they, too, have fallen by the wayside.

“There is a lot of money involved in this and it is just one of those things that sits on the back burner,” Canciamilla said.

School districts in California combined sell more debt than in any other state and that is reflected in the amounts contributed to bond elections there. In 1999, California passed a law to streamline the rules governing school bond elections. The law made it easier for districts to offer bonds through negotiation rather than through competitive bid.

A year later, the state’s voters approved Proposition 39, which lowered the required approval threshold for most school GO elections to a 55% majority from two-thirds. The result has been a deluge of school bond sales.

Since 1999 through the end of November, California K-12 schools have issued  2,752 of new-moneys worth nearly $62 billion, according to Thomson Reuters. That compares to $47 billion worth of new-money K-12 sales in Texas, the state with the second largest amount of new-money sales, and $25 million in New York for the third most.

In an letter last year, Saladino warned bond attorneys, underwriters and advisers to stop school bond practices that he says hurt taxpayers.

Saladino said in the letter that his office rejected some general obligation bond sales because they resembled a “cash-out” financing structure declared illegal by the state attorney general in 2009. He noted some schools were using bond proceeds to pay for cash-flow needs and employing “exotic” debt structures.

The districts have turned to such transactions as declining property values have lowered their tax revenues and limited their ability to fund debt service within tax rates set before the housing collapse.

Even though there appears to be little momentum for change, California Treasurer Bill Lockyer said the time has come.

“In our view, it is probably time to end the days when underwriters, bond counsels or financial advisors fund, manage or provide other key support for local bond campaigns, then get paid to do work on the bond sales,” Lockyer spokesman Tom Dresslar said.

But what does this mean to you?  If your district is one that had revenue needs in 2011 but took a pass on the ballot in favor of 2012, the time is now to get serious about preparing and placing a measure on the ballot.  So what should you do?

First, don’t panic.  2012, particularly November, will be a crowded ballot, but still a great, high turnout election.  You can win a tax measure in November 2012, but preparation will be key.

Second, don’t wait.  Even if you are considering November 2012, ten months from now, call an election advisor immediately and start getting to work. The November presidential election will be busy.  It is imperative that you begin work to research, vet and prepare for a ballot measure.

Third, do your homework.  The complexity of revenue measures has increased in the past few years.  Depending on your public agency you may have a number of options to raise revenue, including a general obligation bond, a parcel tax, a sales tax, a proposition 218 election (benefit assessment), a utility user’s tax, a transient occupancy tax and others.  Each of these options creates different public communication and political needs.

Fourth, do get help.  You are in charge.  Put together a good team to assist you with the financial, political, legal and other aspects of this effort.  No one company can help you with all of your needs – find specialists, hire them to do a specific job and trust their judgment.

Happy 2012!

The strength of TOLA lies in a number of factors – but it shines brightest among our graduates.  Those who’ve trained in TOLA know how to get things done.  Here are just a few examples:

Stephanie DeHerrera, a TOLA 1 graduate, is now a lead organizer on the California Cancer Research Act campaign, a dollar-a-pack tax on cigarettes designed to raise hundred of millions of dollars to fund cancer research.  Big tobacco will spend millions of dollars gobbling up television to overwhelm the underdog CCRA team.  Stephanie is in the fight of her life, pushing a disciplined field program to combat big tobacco.

Karina Rivera, a TOLA 2 graduate, is a field organizer for County Supervisor Wilma Chan in the San Lorenzo area.  Karina, who experienced the thrill of her first political campaign through TOLA, is now actively organizing in unincorporated Alameda County to bring the power of county government directly to the people it serves.  She isn’t waiting in an office for people who need help to drop in, she is out in the community finding and solving problems.

Melquis Naveo, a TOLA 3 graduate and a proud native of Lawrence, Massachusetts (but now representing the East Bay!) is organizing Oakland residents around a package of citizen initiatives created to infuse innovation and new ideas into Oakland city government.  Look for him in a neighborhood near you!

These are just three examples.  There are many, many more.  The point though, is that in the East Bay and throughout the Country; TOLA fellows are taking what they learned in our academy, here in Oakland, and making things happen.

TOLA graduates, as 2011 draws to a close, we salute your efforts and thank you profusely for your dedication to doing the work, not just talking the talk.

Thank you to those of you who visited us at the booth and attended one of the three presentations that tramutola|advisors and our school district and business partners conducted.  Over 150 people were on hand to hear Fred Brill, superintendent, Lafayette School District, Pam Kawasaki, Trustee, Duarte Unified School District and Ed Honowitz, Trustee, Pasadena share their experiences leading their districts through crisis situations.  With Larry Tramutola, founder and CEO of tramutola|advisors moderating, attendees came away with steps to take during a crisis and the importance of ongoing, open communications to earn and build the public trust.  For copies of the presentation, please go to www.aec.csba.org or contact us at tramutola|advisors.

Over 100 people from a variety of districts across the State attended the “Winning a Bond in a Tough Economy” session presented by a panel of experts including Bonnie Moss, Executive Vice President, tramutola|advisors .  With the ongoing economic crisis, the threat of budget triggers and the election opportunities that 2012 provides, this was a timely and important session for most districts.  If you weren’t able to attend, and would like copies of the presentation, or have specific questions about your district fiscal and electoral options, please contact us directly at info@tramutola.com.

Last, but most certainly not least, people were on hand for the first ever Exhibitor Showcase where Larry Tramutola and representatives from the financial advisor and legal professions shared with attendees their perspectives on selecting firms to guide districts looking at bonds as a revenue solution.  The primary takeaway is that when choosing professionals for your bond or revenue measure efforts, do your due diligence, choose experts in each area, and don’t expect a one-stop-shop to meet all your needs.

Whether you were at the CSBA Annual Education Conference, or are viewing sessions online from the comfort of your home, if you are looking at ways to engage your community to support your educational goals and vision, please checkout our website, www.tramutola.com, to find out how we can help.  For those of you considering a bond or parcel tax, there is still time to get started for 2012, but the sooner you act, the better your chances for success.  We look forward to connecting with you soon.

Until next year in San Francisco, thank you again for the opportunity to be a part of your ongoing professional development and for working with you to enhance the quality of education in California.

• Visit us in the Exhibitor Trade Show at our booth #1210.
• Check out “Communicating in Crisis – “How to Keep the Public On Your Side” – December 2, 8:30-9:45am, Convention Center, Room 8.  Larry Tramutola moderates a panel exploring how to keep the public with you even during a crisis.
• Attend “Is This the Right Time to Pass a Bond?  Winning Bond Measures in a Tough Economy” – December 2, 8:30-9:45am, Convention Center, Room 10.  Bonnie Moss, a senior member of tramutola|advisors, will be part of a panel discussing strategies to consider when looking at a bond measure to support your facilities and technology needs.
• New this year, attend the Exhibitor Showcase – “Bond Campaign and Related Services” on the Trade Show Floor, 10:30am-11:30am.  Industry leader, Larry Tramutola, will share insights to help you be a more informed consumer of bond related services.
• Contact us to schedule a time to meet about your specific needs.  Call us at 510-658-7003 or email us at info@tramutola.com.

If we can be of assistance to you in the coming year, or you know of another public agency that needs our help, please let us know.

In the meantime, follow us on facebook & twitter for breaking news and industry updates.

After graduating the first two classes of TOLA, our Fellows have gone on to continue the work of bettering and building communities. You can see how they are making a positive impact and where here.

Since our first class , we have worked on projects throughout the state – organizing local merchant districts and water districts, mobilizing Firefighters and organizing electoral campaigns for candidates, health initiatives and education.

What TOLA’s first year and first 22 organizers have accomplished is nothing short of astonishing. And, while we all know change evolves slowly, with the focus, discipline and hard work our Fellows have put forth, they have realized much change in little time.

The 3^rd graduation marks an important point in TOLA’s trajectory. We are no longer in our infancy. We are no longer answering questions like, “what’s a TOLA” and “what do you guys do?” Now, we regularly receive requests for potential TOLA projects while potential Fellows contact us asking how, when and where to apply.

As we enter year #2 of TOLA, we are taking the next 6 months to reflect, evaluate and reinforce our driving mission: to effect positive change while teaching the next generation of leaders how to be effective grassroots organizers.

We would not be able to have begun, nor successfully completed our first year of TOLA, without the support of our community. Our donors, contributors, teachers and supporters are all responsible for our first year’s glowing success. We thank you all and look forward to an even better second year of training the leaders and organizers of tomorrow.