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Can GBF Advocate?
At our last monthly meeting I requested that club members contact
Governor Schwarzenegger's office to support the passing of State
Assembly Bill 7 (AB7) and I also said that the GBF Board had not taken a
position on this matter. The reason the Board had not taken a position
was simply a matter of timing. Both the NCCFFF and Cal Trout have come
out strongly in favor of AB7 and it is highly likely that the GBF Board
would have done the same had they been given the opportunity before the
monthly meeting. The problem was simply one of timing between my
learning more about AB7 and our monthly meeting being held before our
monthly Board meeting.
This leads to another recent question about what our 501(c)(3)
nonprofit, tax exempt corporation may and may not do regarding political
action. Basically, we can inform members about issues (our information
does not have to be balanced), we can encourage members to call or write
public officials and we can encourage members to speak either in favor
or against issues at public events. We can also encourage members to
vote in a certain way but this may not be the primary purpose of the
club (political action) and we can't demand that our members vote a
certain way or they will be penalized in any way. To my knowledge GBF
has not acted outside of the law and if anything we've been too timid in
our support of legislation that supports our fantastic sport.
Certainly GBF needs to concentrate on the fishing aspect of our sport
and I believe that the club does a fine job of presenting outstanding
speakers, a terrific variety of great fishouts and extremely informative
clinics. In addition to enjoying fishing today we need to spend an
appropriate amount of time (a little or a lot) protecting those
opportunities for future generations.
The Conservation Committee encourages all GBF members to become active
in issues that may impact our sport and we welcome your questions
regarding legislation or other water related matters. Contact GBF VP
Conservation, Heath Wakelee at 916 870 5253 or at
GBFConservation@cs.com.
Heath Wakelee
VP Conservation |
