SCI Quarterly Board Meeting

National's August board meeting was held in Tucson AZ. Thursday and Friday various committee meetings and training during the day. Saturday was the national board of directors meeting.

California is the only state that holds a meeting with all chapters in the state asked to attend. Dennis Anderson started this about 20 years ago and now we are the chair. Our topic: the coalition and what are we doing. The coalition information goes out to chapter presidents but appears it is not shared with their board or membership. The coalition will now do a monthly bullet point and have it sent from our DC office to all California members.

We have had 2 successes in the past months. Lisa McNamee, Kathy Lunch and I meet with Erin Chappell in July. Erin is an adviser to the Fish and Game commission. Assemblyman Bigalow has proposed a bill taking wild pigs off the game status, which we strongly opposed. Erin has rewritten her proposal leaving wild pigs as game and easing up depredation permits for land owners. Had we not weighed in, wild pigs would have lost its game status. SB 249 has moved forward but we were successful in the “1 gun a month” being dropped. Small victories but victories! Mike Rogers has some video clips that will be shared to all chapters promoting hunting. Hopefully they are on a flash drive we received.

Finance committee. We voted in May to authorize taking 800K from our investment account to cover budget. This was not necessary due to cost cutting and spending. The finance budget meeting was done conference call versus in person. Airfare, hotels and food for 20 plus people gone.

Government affairs committee has new chairs. We will meet monthly by conference call. We are combining HDF and HAF funds. It's confusing - even to us. Our lobbyist said at the rate congress is approving Trump's appointees it will take 11 years. I hope he is in office that long! In May we were told the Democrats vowed to oppose these appointments. Makes you proud to be an American.

Convention has a new chair, Scott Chapman. Hopefully he will make some changes. I'm going to propose an incentive to our board to encourage you to attend our convention. As soon as I get approval we will let you know. One more year and back in Reno.