As Vice Chair of the Federal Legislation Committee, it is my responsibility to travel with leaders from the Port, Transit, and Water Department, as I recently did to our nation’s capital, to engage our federal representatives and executive agencies to ensure they know of our priorities.
Many of you know, we in Southern California pay more in federal taxes than is distributed back to our region through federal allocations and grants. While we are working hard to get federal legislators to embrace our priorities and increase our federal funding allocations, we also need to find local solutions to protect our communities by: investing in economic development initiatives that bring jobs and resources to Long Beach; leveraging public-private partnership opportunities; and increasing community investments through volunteerism and non-profits who are committed to supporting our parks, local habitat and public safety.