50A - ORDINANCE - SUNSHINE ORDINANCE

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ID September 27, 2012 Dear Mayor and Councilmembers, Greg M. Conger President Andrea Zinder Secretary - Treasurer On behalf of UFCW and our 2,5 00 members who live in Santa Ana, we write to express our support for the Sunshine Ordinance. We encourage the Council, as representatives of our community, to stand up for government transparency, integrity, and accessibility by designing and implementing a strong Sunshine Ordinance for Santa Ana. For the last eight months, UFCW has been a coalition member of SACReD. We developed the policy proposals in partnership with neighborhood residents, community organizations, neighborhood associations, local business members and with you. We firmly stand by every policy of the Sunshine Ordinance and the deliberate, transparent, inclusive process through which it was created. We believe that the Sunshine Ordinance will strengthen our communities, our city, and our economy. Government transparency promoted through the Sunshine Ordinance will bolster public confidence in the integrity of our government. The Sunshine Ordinance will increase opportunities for residents and stakeholders to participate in their local government, improving community engagement. An informed and engaged public will smooth the development process in the city and remove barriers to economic development by promoting dialogue and collaboration between community interests, business, developers and city officials. The practices of the past have resulted in hundreds of lost jobs and hours for our members in the city. Our members want to be able to participate in growing and strengthening our community with quality jobs for the future. Although we are heartened by the Mayor and Council's leadership and commitment to developing a Sunshine Ordinance, we insist that the resulting ordinance be a strong one. One way to ensure this is by revisiting and adopting lobbyist registration. The Sunshine Ordinance requests that lobbyists register when doing business in the City of Santa Ana. Currently, the draft ordinance provides registering as an option for lobbyists. Registration of lobbyists provides the public with information vital to ensuring confidence in the integrity of local government, particularly regarding individuals and entities that are involved with both candidate campaigns or private industry activity and legislative activity. We urge you to make lobbyist registration mandatory, not optional. This type of transparence will give the UFCW and our members the confidence that the Council and Staff have everyone's best interest in mind. We urge you to stay strong and not back down on these issues. Lobbyist registration is crucial to the success of the Sunshine Ordinance, and the Sunshine Ordinance is crucial to the success of Santa Ana as a city. We're eager and ready to work with businesses, developers, and government to improve our city, but we must be included in the process in order to do so. A strong Sunshine Ordinance is the tool we need. We appreciate your consideration of our request, and we look forward to continuing the work to bring Sunshine to Santa Ana. mce ly ck Eiden xecutive Vice President UFCW Local 324 8530 STANTON AVENUE, P.O. BOX 5004, BUENA PARK, CALIFORNIA 90622-5004 714-995-4601 800-244-UFCW .: FAX 714-995-8214, BRANCH OFFICE 949-587-9881 WWW.UFCW324.ORG 50 -14