Between a group of us, we visited 32+ California Congresspeople and Senators. I found many supporters during my visits. The staffers asked great questions about our programs and the local impacts of our programs. While I didn't have all of the answers at hand, I will be doing follow-ups this week. Glenda and I were accompanied by some of our superstars, including Bill Frost, Lenya Quinn-Davidson, Monique Rivera, Darren Haver, Mark Lagrimini, and Teal Cody as well as David Ackerly and Government Affairs staff from UCD, UCB, and UCR. They all did a fantastic job talking about the details of their programs as well as the value of those efforts for the greater CA. The March trip to DC isn't particularly something I look forward to each year, but I think we all had good visits and I would say it has been the best of my three years thus far. Sometimes it is difficult to hold the attention of the staffers. You can't blame them; they pretty much spend the entire month of March visiting with teams of constituents armed with details about their cause. Even the meeting that precedes the Hill visits was better than it has been. Perhaps I am acclimating.
While in DC, we ran into Susie Kocher who was making visits of her own with forestry colleagues and program leaders. Doug Parker was in DC the week before us to talk about the water programs; another vital topic to CA and the US, as a whole.
I heard on 60 Minutes this evening that a record number of Americans have fallen behind on car payments; 7 million. My take away from that is that while our own ‘central funding' competes with many other important causes, the need for our work has never been stronger. That's why our elected officials welcome our visits and ask for invitations to see our work firsthand.
I am not making progress on my review of merit and promotion packages that I had hoped at this point. My goal is to be through all of the packets by June 1 so that I can then go through and review the Peer Review Committee and ad hoc reviewer comments before making decisions by June 15. I can't attribute my lack of progress to Daylight Saving Time. What I can say is that for the packets I have reviewed, I continue to be impressed by the work of the UC ANR team. All should proudly take the opportunity to show off their efforts and impacts with our elected officials.