STAYING THE COURSE

We look forward to a day when we don’t have to “update” you with such frequency. Sadly, that day is not today.

The 1^st of the two Assembly policy committees that will hear the 3^rd iteration of the Public Golf Endangerment Act (AB 1910) has set a hearing date. The Assembly Housing & Community Development Committee will hear the bill Wednesday March 23 at 9:30 AM.

SCGA has reached out twice to its clubs to join the game’s leadership organizations in filing opposition letters. We’re happy to report that in addition to the usual large organizational suspects, some 60 have responded – 60 and still counting we hope. If you’re reading this and represent a club that might want to join the fray, click here to be taken to the Public Endangerment Act landing page that provides a template and informs you how to populate and return it to SCGA for filing.

The second of the two committees, Local Government, has yet to set a hearing date. We’ll let you know as soon as we know. You can always check the Association’s website to get the latest information. By the way, that’s the committee where golf has a good shot to stall the bill. Housing, not so much; however, golf still needs to mount a spirited criticism of the bill at each step of the way as it tries to pass through the long and complicated road it has to traverse if it hopes to become law. Golf’s job: To stall it somewhere along that road. Golf’s challenge: To not let fatigue chill the vigilance and activism that will be necessary to strike this Public Golf Endangerment Act out in its 3^rd and final time at bat.

Golfers like to play golf; they’re not much for “activism,” particularly golf activism. Indeed, many play golf to get away from all of that. When golfers and golf clubs do dip their toes into the activism waters, it’s usually a one-and-done effort. Not so for those accustomed to pursuing missions in the public sector, whether legislators like Cristina Garcia seemingly bent on repurposing municipal golf courses in certain communities as housing or environmentalists bent on a whole host of ends that can be difficult for golf to accommodate as seamlessly as they often believe they can.

Very recently SCGA filed a set of comments regarding the Environmental Impact Report the City of San Diego has commissioned for its final De Anza Revitalization Plan. San Diego’s Mission Bay Municipal Golf Course is part of the Plan’s coverage. At each juncture of what is now a 6-year process, environmental organizations have pressed hard to have not just most of the land covered by the “Plan” but all of it, including that part that is the Mission Bay Golf Course, restored to wetland habitat. At each juncture, the city has reserved the Mission Bay parcel and its immediate environs for “active” recreation. And that is exactly what the Draft EIR for the “Final” Plan envisages, but that hasn’t stopped the same environmental groups from issuing voluminous comments pressing their case for replacement of the Mission Bay Golf Course with their preferred outcome.

Whether Mission Bay in the Pacific Beach community of San Diego, the YIMBY’s supporting AB 1910, or a whole host of similarly situated examples that we routinely deal with, those invested in mission-based pursuits never stop pursuing agendas predicated thereon.

Large interests – business interests, labor interests, professional interests – routinely try to match these combinations of passion cum numbers with various versions of funded response, sometimes known as “associations” that hire professional staffs, engage in electoral politics, retain lobbyists, and pursue major public relations campaigns. In the alternative, they often go the grassroots route by funding large membership-based groups – the members being those small business concerns or rank-and-file citizens who share the interest in one case and the passion in the other. Examples of both abound. Which way these “interests” go depends upon whether the interest is resource rich and member/employee light or member/employee rich and resource light.

Golf is a tweener – resource medium, employee light, and member rich, albeit membership poor in the mission-based passion quotient that characterizes those organizations like the environmental ones in San Diego that can keep turning out devotees no matter how many times things don’t go their way.

For a number of reasons much too complicated to entertain this day, golf in the State of California has not seen fit to deploy its “medium” resources to create the kind of advocacy institution that hires staff and plays politics, nor has it used those same resources to fund the creation of a vibrant grassroots organization composed of the roughly 3.6 million Californians who play golf. Those organizations don’t just come into being by spontaneous combustion; someone or something always provides at least the start-up or seed funding.

The SCGA has to its great credit determined to add advocacy to its wide array of services. But as progressive, eclectic, and dynamic an organization as SCGA is, it is still an amateur golf association. It is a golf service organization that offers as one of its many services, advocacy on behalf of its members, clubs, and the game. It is not an advocacy organization. If we do say so ourselves, its advocacy function punches considerably above its weight. But at the end of the day, it only has so much weight. And its members have only so much bandwidth to stay engaged in public policy matters with the same ferocity as many of the game’s detractors.

Long-term the California golf community needs to begin adding weight to that construct called the California Alliance for Golf. Short-term (i.e., the Public Golf Endangerment Act) we will all just have to keep punching well above our weight. We have thus far, and the results show it. But we can’t let down now as we enter the stretch run re AB 1910. The bill’s proponents certainly won’t. And if we don’t let up, we have a very good shot at prevailing. Don’t stop now! Keep those organizational letters coming, and when the campaign turns again to encouraging individuals to contact their legislators, do what you can to encourage them to stay the course a little bit longer.