What’s a Chamber of Commerce For?
A Friend has forwarded a press release from the North Orange County Chamber of Commerce. This used to be the Fullerton Chamber of Commerce that merged with other groups in neighboring towns, I’ve been told.
The Chamber is throwing itself a birthday party brunch in celebration of 133 years of existence. The fare, donuts, is in keeping with the odd year number to celebrate.
Notice that presentations will be made by Republic Services, the massive corporate trash hauler whose contract with Fullerton is up this year; and SCAG, the completely opaque regional agency responsible for the nonsensical 13,000 new housing units shoved up our backside by the Sacramento Affordable Housing Cartel (SAHC). That seems sooooo fitting.
For the past 30 years Fullerton Chamber of Commerce has gone from tax-fighter to weak little sister of Fullerton City Hall. Under the dim bulb Theresa Harvey, the Chamber became an auxiliary of the City, which is appropriate because after she left the Chamber she became the Chair of the CSUF Auxiliary – another totally opaque agency that plays monopoly with money with virtually no oversight.
The Chamber became a lap dog, not a watch dog for the waste and dumbassery in City Hall. Ms. Harvey was a completely clueless puppet. Under her, the Chamber actually threw their lot in with the public employee unions in 2020 in support of the Measure S sales tax.
Parenthetically, the CSUF Auxiliary has become a final stop for local small-time influence shoppers like Harvey and her predecessor James Alexander, and that brought us the disastrous Elk’s Club/Universaity Heights faculty housing debacle.
Apparently there’s a new guy in charge at the Chamber, but I can’t say I’m hopeful. The Chamber should be promoting small businesses at City Hall, and promoting economy and efficiency in local government, not “tax your way out of it” boohooism. Will it?
Anyway, I thought back to the days in 1993 and 1994 when the Chamber stood up for businesses large and small, fighting City Hall on the unnecessary utility tax imposed by McClanahan, Bankhead, and A.B. Catlin. Those were fun times.
The Fullerton Chamber went corporate – Gas Co., SCAG, MWD, Edison, municipal waste hauler, big manufacturers in town, that sort of thing.
These sorts were active on the Local Government Committee where they pretended to be conservative but were in reality pro-corporate, meaning they really just wanted to keep the City apparatchiks happy and not make waves on behalf of their small members.
After the tax was repealed Doc HeeHaw became President and immediately began the détente you mention, détente that ended in subservience and then irrelevance in Fullerton’s political scene. Theresa Harvey was a cypher, of course, but she was a symptom, not a cause.
They undoubtedly support special sales taxes in the fall.
Jim Alexander. Now there’s a creepy face I don’t miss. No thanks for sharing.