In 2005, the California Alliance for Jobs closed its tenth full year in operation. This special edition of The Ally outlines the Alliance's story, from its humble beginnings to its rise in stature to an organization with statewide influence. For your copy, email us with your mailing address.

Inside the Special Tenth Anniversary Edition of the Ally:

Main story: The Alliance Marks a Milestone
Having closed its tenth full year in operation, the California Alliance for Jobs has acquired a long, rich history of promoting public works investment on behalf of Northern California's heavy construction industry. In that time, the Alliance has helped generate an estimated $68 billion for transportation, water and flood control construction - creating nearly a million jobs over 30 years. Now, the real work starts. Read more.

A Tribute to Our Founders
We salute the three contractor associations and two labor unions that in 1993 set aside their differences to create a venue for pursuing their common interests. The result: The Alliance.

An Illustrated Chronology
Moments and milestones spanning more than a decade tell the story of the Alliance - from its humble beginnings handing out bumper stickers and waving banners to its crown achievements helping raise billions of dollars for public infrastructure projects.

Rebuild California: Our Mission and Motto
With front man Will Durst reading from the Alliance playbook, the Rebuild California public information campaign has helped bring infrastructure out of the shadows and into the running as a top public concern.

Meeting the Transportation Sales Tax Challenge
The Alliance has been a key player in passing seven transportation sales tax measures, securing more than $13 billion for projects. How the winning formula was developed.

Taking a Bite Out of the Housing Crisis
Never one to shy away from a challenge, the Alliance has come out swinging against no-growthers who have threatened to exasperate California's worsening housing crisis. At the ballot box and in the courtroom, victories have been realized.

Advocating Sound Transportation Policy
By influencing and participating in the planning process, pulling together coalitions, rallying the public, and scoring at the ballot box, the Alliance has emerged as a voice of reason among divergent transportation advocates.

Weighing in on Water
Considering the state's water infrastructure was designed to serve a population half the size of California's today, expansion and reconstruction of water treatment, distribution and storage facilities is crucial. The Alliance is dipping its toe into the debate, with promising successes.

Main story: Ten Years of working to Rebuild California

It's the sort of thing people don't want to dwell on when they live in the flood zone during an El Niño winter, with rivers inching toward the high water line and reservoirs opening their floodgates.

But there they were - billboards reminding residents of flood-prone Central California that the only thing separating them from submersion was a poorly maintained levee.

"There is a word for people who don't support levee repairs: SWIMMERS," one terse billboard read. Read another, "There are two kinds of levees: those that have failed and those that will."

The billboards were an early attempt by the California Alliance for Jobs to raise public awareness about one aspect of the growing infrastructure crisis in the Golden State. People clearly took notice, as the stir resulted in letters to newspapers and phone calls to public officials touting the importance of adequate flood protection.

Since then, the Alliance has moved far beyond erecting billboards and printing bumper stickers to get its message across, but it is still hard at work sounding the alarm about the need to maintain and improve our public works. As the Alliance completes its tenth full year in operation, it emerges today as a heavy hitter with a strong voice in how California tackles its crucial transportation, water, growth and urban development challenges. Elected officials, community leaders, business and industry groups, and the general public are taking heed and taking action.

This influence comes about as a result of the Alliance's measurable accomplishments in its first ten years promoting the Northern California heavy construction industry and its interests. Those accomplishments include:

The Alliance's initiatives and activities have helped bring an estimated $68 billion of public works construction on line in the next three decades, generating more than a million jobs.

The Alliance's widely recognized Rebuild California campaign, featuring comic Will Durst, has evolved into a serial commentary on the state's most pressing challenges: traffic congestion and road conditions, power outages, the housing shortage, and a looming shortage of water. Public awareness of these issues has increased significantly because of the campaign.

Having played a major role in passing seven county transportation sales tax measures in Northern California, the Alliance has become an essential ally for counties who need to build a campaign that can overcome the daunting task of reaching a two-thirds "super-majority" approval for these measures.

Homebuilders have found in the Alliance a valuable new ally capable of providing suitable development projects with the public support that is needed to ensure agency approval, even in the face of organized opposition.

The Alliance's transportation advocacy activities have given automobile drivers and the business community a stronger voice in how transportation dollars ought to be spent, answering anti-car and anti-highway activists who had grown accustomed to never being challenged.

"The California Alliance for Jobs isn't just talking about the state's crumbling infrastructure - it's doing something about it," State Senate Pro-Tem Don Perata said. "The Alliance's work to help pass Prop. 42, Regional Measure 2 in the Bay Area and seven county sales tax measures for transportation is paying off for all of us, in better roads and less traffic across the state."

The Alliance was given birth in 1995 by three employer associations (Associated General Contractors, Engineering & Utility Contractors Assoc. and Association of Engineering Construction Employers) representing some 2,000 heavy construction contractors and by two labor unions (Operating Engineers Local 3 and Northern California District Council of Laborers) representing the 50,000 union construction workers they employ.

The idea was to create an organization that could draw upon the strengths of both management and labor to more effectively promote the industry and advocate for policies that would generate more construction jobs and improve California's economy.

Like most new organizations, the Alliance started small. A mission statement, a startup team and a series of whitepapers on the importance of bankrolling public works resulted in a media splash and helped get the Alliance's name out in 1995.

It wasn't until political victories and public relations successes accumulated that the Alliance's prominence and influence started to increase.

The Alliance had a hand in the 1996 voter approval of Proposition 192, which generated $2 billion to retrofit state bridges to withstand larger magnitude earthquakes. The following year, the Alliance helped win approval of $300 million in water infrastructure bonds in San Francisco and $120 million for flood control projects in Napa County.

The Alliance had yet to find its voice, however, with a fully developed public relations campaign - and its attempts to propel transportation sales tax measures to victory in Sonoma and Alameda counties failed despite valiant efforts.

That started to change in 1999 when the Alliance's Rebuild California campaign secured political humorist Will Durst to help drive home the public infrastructure message in a manner that resonated with the public. By delivering the message in a humorous and empathetic manner, Durst emerged not as the bearer of bad news but rather as a hopeful ally.

With Durst as the front man in radio advertisements broadcast throughout the Bay Area and Sacramento, the Rebuild California motto has done for public infrastructure what the Nike swoosh did for tennis shoes and the golden arches did for hamburgers - branded "inframercials." The radio spots have evolved into a catchy blend of humor, wit, and empathy for working folks who must rely on our infrastructure everyday for their jobs and their quality of life.

The popularity of the radio ads has bolstered the other components of the Rebuild California program as well: the www.rebuildca.org web site, the Alliance's ongoing press relations work and its very own magazine, The Ally.

As its message crystallized, the Alliance scored a series of victories that established the organization as a political powerhouse capable of making a difference in the housing and transportation debates. The Alliance helped defeat slow-growth initiatives in the East Bay that threatened to worsen the already critical housing shortage.

And in November 2000, more than 81 percent of voters in Alameda County approved a half-cent sales tax for transportation, with the Alliance as a driving force behind the campaign. The initiative, bolstered by a unique coalition that included environmentalists normally at odds with the Alliance and its allies, raised $1.4 billion for transportation projects.

 "In 1998, November, we went out for a half-cent sales tax which would include transportation projects in Alameda County. And we did a very poor job of bringing together the coalitions, the grassroots effort that was needed to pass it and subsequently we failed,'' recalled Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty. "In 2000 we went out to the ballot again. The California Alliance for Jobs stepped forward and was able to help organize the grassroots support, bring together. We were successful we passed with 81 and half percent vote and now we have a tremendous amount of money - about 1.5 billion dollars - that we'll be able to put toward transportation projects in Alameda County for the next 20 years."

Building on its success in Alameda County, the Alliance has developed a potent program for helping other counties pass or reauthorize their own transportation sales tax measures.

Since 1999, seven counties have passed such measures, with the Alliance's help, generating $13.4 billion for local transportation projects and an estimated 200,000 jobs.

The Alliance's executive director, Jim Earp, is quick to point out that a winning formula is not one size fits all. It requires a detailed analysis of the voters, a well-developed transportation plan, a strong coalition and a large dose of political intuition involved to win - particularly since a supermajority of two-thirds of voters is required for approval.

The Alliance's statewide influence and recognition was bolstered significantly in March 2002 with voter approval of Proposition 42, which dedicated the sales tax paid on gasoline for transportation projects. As co-chair of the campaign and its largest contributor, the Alliance pointed to Prop. 42's approval by 69 percent of voters as a mandate to overhaul and expand the state's transportation infrastructure, which had earned the dubious position as the most congested and potholed in the nation.

Since the passage of Prop. 42, the Alliance has led the fight to prevent the state legislature and governor from suspending Prop. 42 because of state budget shortfalls. Using grassroots action campaigns utilizing mail, web and radio action alerts, the Alliance helped generate thousands of messages to state officials asking that Prop. 42 funds be used for their intended purpose.

In 2005, the $1.3 billion generated by Prop. 42 was allowed for the first time to be used as voters wished. The Alliance played a prominent role in a series of press conferences with Governor Schwarzenegger as he announced his decision to leave the funds intact.

Currently, the Alliance is working on a statewide voter initiative to close the loophole in Prop. 42 that would make it impossible for the funds to be confiscated.

Defending Prop. 42 has not taken all of the Alliance's attention, however. Since Prop. 42 passed, the Alliance was seen as instrumental in helping win the political fight in 2003 to gain voter approval of a $1.6 billion reconstruction of San Francisco's aging Hetch Hetchy water system.

Additionally, the Alliance helped quash a no-growth ballot measure in El Dorado County, helped pass a 2004 advisory vote allowing the possible expansion of Los Vaqueros Reservoir in Contra Costa County, and helped pass four transportation sales tax measures in November 2004, including one in Sonoma County where three previous attempts had failed.

Never an organization to rest on the comfortable laurels of its past successes, the Alliance is now positioning itself to be a key player in yet another crucial statewide campaign: a statewide infrastructure bond to raise up to $50 billion for transportation and water projects unable to move forward without an infusion of new money.

Such an initiative could appear before voters in 2006.

In this special edition of The Ally, we offer an illustrated chronology of the Alliance's first decade, along with feature stories about its efforts in public relations, transportation sales tax measures, and transportation, water and housing advocacy.

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