CHAMBER VIEW
2018: A Prosperous Region
with a Chamber for All
The Capital Region is on the path towards something special. Entrepreneurs and artists are creating, developers are building, new businesses are being started and the number of people moving here is steadily rising. In 2018, the Sacramento Metro Chamber is committed to continuing to build a strong business community to be the catalyst for a strong and prosperous Capital Region.
The Sacramento Metro Chamber is focused on the initiatives that will better our region: a stronger workforce, healthier regulations for business, accessible public transportation, affordable housing and retaining talent. We will be kicking off the year with several programs that will surely fall into an interest of yours. As we work toward our goals, I encourage you to get involved and join us on the journey to make the Capital Region the best place to work and live.
Become a part of one of our committees, serve as an Ambassador, or register for one of our programs or events. If you aren’ t a member, reach out to someone on the Chamber team( volunteer leaders or Chamber staff) to figure out how you can best engage with the Chamber in areas of greatest interest to you.
We are going to have a very busy start to 2018. In January, we will be hosting our 123rd Annual Dinner, honoring the leaders and changemakers in our community. We invite you to join us, celebrate their success and make connections that will help us become a stronger community together. In March, Metro EDGE, a program of the Metro Chamber Foundation, will host the annual EMERGE Summit that gathers over 600 young professionals in Northern California for a day of networking and professional development. On the advocacy side, our State Legislative Summit in March, as well as our 48th annual Cap-to-Cap program in April, will give you the opportunity to engage with other business leaders and elected officials to advocate for policies that foster a better region.
Our mission at the Metro Chamber is to advocate and support a regional economy where all businesses and professionals can grow. We look forward to your partnership as we begin this new year at the Chamber.
Chis Delfino
2018 BOARD CHAIR METRO CHAMBER
Join Us( 916) 552-6800 www. metrochamber. org
• DISCOURSE
more. I think the question then is how do we deal with some of the issues around the high cost of being in California? Frankly, for many companies the regulatory environment here is an even greater hit to their bottom line than taxes. And throughout all of this is the want for certainty. Employers want to know that the rules aren’ t going to change and the rug won’ t be pulled out from under them. They want certainty to be able to plan and grow here in California. So I think taxes are only one important sliver of what we need to talk about in terms of making California a healthy state for economic growth.
You sit on the board for Ceres, a nonprofit organization working to get some of the world’ s largest investors to take stronger action on climate change. What are you doing to encourage this kind of investment in California?
I also sit on the board of public pension funds like CalPERS and CalSTRS, where we’ re very focused on climate change because it is becoming much more of a business risk. And so we look at how we can influence companies to think about transitioning some of their business practices, particularly with respect to energy and water use, all the way throughout their supply chain. The work with Ceres started when we began looking at the carbon footprint of the public equity portfolio of CalPERS. We learned we could attribute 50 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions in that entire portfolio to just 100 companies, which suggested to us that’ s probably true with other investors as well. And so the work at Ceres is really looking at how we can influence the capital markets to try to be a catalyst for change in a more accelerated way. Ceres is part of a partnership to create a global engagement strategy with the top 100 global companies. This is a way investors can see we mean business when we say that climate change is a real risk if you are not addressing it in terms of your business plans.
Were you surprised by how strong the reaction was across so many industries to President Trump’ s decision to pull the U. S. out of the Paris Climate Accord?
I was not surprised, especially in regard to multi-national companies that aren’ t specifically in the energy arena. They already see the impacts of climate change around the world. More importantly, I do think this is now a bottom-line calculation for businesses. Sea-level rise, for example, is going to wreak havoc on the condition of our ports and the infrastructure around those ports. All of this is going to add to the cost of doing business if we don’ t start paying attention to the effects of climate change. The urgency is that if we don’ t pay attention to it now, by the time we do address it, the cost
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