The 2013 California Economic Summit Is Being Held In Los Angeles

Leon Panetta and George Shultz Are Honorary Chairs of a Unique State Effort Aimed at Increasing Job Creation and Improving the Economy 

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 8, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- More than 400 Californians will gather in Los Angeles today for the 2013 California Economic Summit—a unique year round effort designed to create middle class jobs and maintain California's economic competitiveness. The initiative is a partnership between California Forward and the California Stewardship Network that recognizes California is made up of distinct regions that often have different economic drivers, but face the common challenge of how to restore and maintain job growth in the Golden State. 

In the past year, nearly 2,000 persons across California participated in 16 regional meetings from San Diego to the Redwood Coast. During these gatherings, participants identified priorities that help define policy initiatives to advance the state's triple bottom line of a prosperous economy, a sustainable environment and community equity.  

The seven Priority Initiatives that will be addressed at the Summit are:   

• Modernizing the state's infrastructure
• Developing a 21^st century workforce
• Improving access to capital
• Advancing manufacturing
• Creating efficiencies within the regulatory environment
• Enhancing the working landscapes interface between rural and urban regions
• Increasing the supply of housing

Two well-known Californians are serving as honorary co-chairs of the 2013 Summit: Leon Panetta, who was a former Secretary of Defense and the CIA Director under President Obama and is the founder of the Panetta Institute for Public Policy and George Shultz, who served in three different Cabinet positions including Secretary of State under President Reagan, and is currently a Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. 

In a letter to Summit participants, they applauded the effort "to connect the state's diverse regions to rebuild a strong middle class."

"We believe this profoundly new approach, giving Californians a way to cure California's ills, is the best way to accelerate the economic recovery—and the only way to provide enduring stewardship of the state's diverse communities and its unrivalled natural resources," they wrote in their letter. "The next task is to take these regional ideas and make them a statewide reality. That is the aim of the 2013 Summit, and we hope you will join us as we do what Californians have always done: Get to work and get the job done."

Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom will be the keynote speaker. Additional speakers at the Summit sessions include Michael Rossi, Governor Brown's Senior Jobs Advisor, Senate President pro Tempore Darrell Steinberg, Antonia Hernandez, President and CEO of the California Community Foundation, and Kish Rajan, Director of the Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development (Go-Biz). Carl Guardino, CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, will be serving as master of ceremonies.

California's economy is a nation in and of itself with many diverse regions. While the state's unemployment rate has improved in the last 18 months (currently at 8.9%, there are still two million Californians out work), some of the regions have been hit harder than others. For example, more than one in four people still cannot find work in rural Imperial Valley cities like El Centro. And the Inland Empire has the highest unemployment rate in the entire nation for a region with more than one million people. By contrast, most of the state's coastal areas have unemployment rates below the 8.9 percent state figure, with Marin County at only 5 percent. Addressing this uneven recovery is one of the key issues that will be discussed at the Summit.

A series of specific strategies will be developed from the seven Priority Initiatives during the Summit sessions. Those areas will be defined in the coming weeks and Summit participants will continue to create policy recommendations and work closely with state and local elected officials to outline the necessary steps for implementing the strategies over the next year through the creation of an Action Plan for 2014. The Action Plan is expected to be completed in December.

The first Summit was held in Santa Clara in May 2012. To learn about the significant progress achieved since the 2012 Economic Summit, visit http://www.caeconomy.org/progress.

ABOUT THE CALIFORNIA ECONOMIC SUMMIT
The California Economic Summit is an unprecedented ongoing initiative hosted by California Forward, a bipartisan good government reform effort to improve performance and democracy, www.cafwd.org, and the California Stewardship Network, an alliance of regional partnerships promoting California's economic vitality,www.castewardship.org. For more information on the California Economic Summit, visit www.caeconomy.org. To access the Summit Playbook, which provides information on the seven action plans and a list of action team members, visit http://www.caeconomy.org/pages/playbook-2013. For a copy of the Summit's Program Schedule, visit http://www.caeconomy.org/program.

Summit underwriters include: AT&T, Automobile Club of Southern California, Chevron, Edison International, Metabolic Studio, Sempra Energy Utilities and the California Airports Council.

ABOUT CALIFORNIA FORWARD
California Forward is a nonpartisan and nonprofit organization, devoted to improving the performance of government in California. It believes that increased emphasis on accountability and transparency will create government that Californians deserve and expect. (www.cafwd.org)

ABOUT THE CALIFORNIA STEWARDSHIP NETWORK
The California Stewardship Network was created in 2008, when a group of diverse regions across California came together to establish an alliance of regional partnerships to tackle the state's most pressing economic, environmental and community challenges (www.castewardship.org).

Contact: Ed Coghlan
(818) 489-4774

SOURCE California Forward