CAG’S “NEW ORDER” - Taking the Next Step in the Alliance’s Maturation
CAG’S “NEW ORDER”
Taking the Next Step in the Alliance’s Maturation
It was a long time coming – or more accurately, a long time between resolving to restructure the California Alliance for Golf for more efficient projection of the game’s interests and completing the moves required to begin restructuring it. A long time between landing on the advocacy alliance’s next step in a long-distance run to develop the greater advocacy functionality over time that the game understands will be required to keep defending its turf (literally) in an environment all but guaranteed to become more difficult to navigate as the months and years go by and completing all the tasks attendant to that next step.
With the transfer of the financial and compliance functions to the SCGA in April, all the tasks related to SCGA’s assumption of the role of CAG’s “managing partner” have been completed: Two IC retentions in a part-time executive director and Sacramento legislative consultant; a formal agreement between the CAG Board of Directors and the SCGA that spells out the rights and responsibilities of both in the “managing partner” arrangement; the assumption of the accounting, financial, and compliance functions just referenced; a set of reciprocal obligations to guide the CAG and SCGA staffers who operate in many of the same intersections of the game and public policy; and the definition of SCGA’s understanding of how much of its organizational infrastructure is to be lent to the service of a collective enterprise of which it is but one component, albeit the one whose role as “managing partner” renders it as a de facto first among equals.
In short, what CAG and SCGA have done is to codify and in the process institutionalize a de facto arrangement that has been in effect for a long time. It’s no secret that the SCGA has been the engine driving the work of CAG. It is the only member of the Alliance with a Department of full-time staffers dedicated to governmental/public affairs work. The reasons for that are many, varied, and unique in terms of a history that is very different from other amateur golf associations in the nation. But the SCPGA has brought aboard some part-time staffing, and many of the Alliance’s member organizations are adding committees, participating in “ambassador” programs, and emphasizing the importance of governmental affairs in their communication and educational exercises. More staffing is sure to follow, if only slowly over time.
“Slowly over time” – that’s a good description of how CAG has evolved to this point and a good description of how it is likely to continue evolving to meet the game’s challenges in the public square.
And it’s a good description of a process that CAG President Len Dumas has created co-terminus with the commencement of the “new order” role to begin putting some meat on the bones of it. We have referred to it as a “process,” because while it is envisaged as leading to the creation of a strategic plan, there are certain threshold questions that have to be addressed before informed work on such a “plan” can proceed, among them:
- Given the Alliance’s staffing assets (ED, legislative consultant, and SCGA) and the model employed to fund those assets and subsequent work product, what can the Alliance do to build atop that business model in a way that complements it?
- Given that business model, what actions or goals will create a sustainable funding mechanism without running the risk of straining the resources of the Alliance?
- Does CAG seek to continue being the nonprofit driven " for the good of the game" Alliance that its current structure dictates, a structure that has served the game well in recent years, or a business lobby?
- Does CAG seek to be a member-based and driven advocacy organization in the way that most, if not all, environmental and other "identity" or "issue" based advocacy groups are? [short-term goal or longer-term goal, assuming it’s a goal at all?]
- Does CAG hope to begin moving in one of the two previous directions (traditional business lobby or citizen activist lobby), or both, while at the same time keeping its current nonprofit base in control of the organization?
- Does the “new order” call for the creation of a Task Force at some point to update the BYLAWS to better align them with the new business model designating SCGA as the Alliance’s managing partner?
None of this is to suggest that CAG has stopped doing or is going to pause doing what it has been doing and doing effectively for years in tackling the game’s legislative and regulatory interests in the Capitol and beyond. Indeed, CAG is sponsoring its first bill in AB 1954 (Ward; D-San Diego) in this session. The Alliance is opposing at least one bill and tracking a few others that could lead to if not opposition perhaps some form of support with a few minor modifications. And we are breaking into three teams on April 15 to make a large number of visits calculated to dovetail with our 2026 legislative agenda – a reprise of the “Capitol Day” formula we employed to great success in 2025. And because of the “new order,” CAG has begun working at local and regional levels in the water and municipal golf realms in ways that it simply could not do pre-new order.
“Slowly over time” to which we ought to add “surely,” as in slowly but surely over time. If you take a step back and look at CAG’s progress from loose water coalition to loosely organized volunteer organization to de facto alliance animated by the work of SCGA’s Public Affairs Department to today’s structure that we have termed the “new order,” the “surely” in the troika of slowly, surely, and time is the most important word of the three. But with the advent of the “new order,” the “slowly” promises to become a bit faster and the “time” promises to be a bit shorter. This has something to do with the properties of “acceleration,” but we’ll leave that discussion to a future update.
What we won’t leave to a future update is the way in which the California golf community, at least the nonprofit component of it, has begun to understand two truths central to success in the public realm: 1) That only an advocacy functionality built for the long run is built for success, and 2) that any advocacy functionality that is built only to react is built to fail.
The following observation from a story about a failed effort to mitigate the impacts of a huge data center in another state said it well:
“The tragic irony is that it’s really hard to get the community activated at this on the front end, when things are more hypothetical,” she said. “People’s interest gets piqued when there’s a specific proposal. But by the time it gets to that point, the period has already passed where the municipality has the most power to actually affect how that’s going to go.” [Grist/Spotlight PA; March 19, 2026]
Golf doesn’t want to fail. That much is clear. But what is even clearer is that if the moment characterized by what we have called the “new order” is the last such moment in this slog of “slowly but surely over time,” golf will eventually fail. Advocacy is no different from business or any other activity; if you’re not moving forward, you’re going backward. There is no such thing as treading in place.
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A quick update where CAG’s bill (AB 1954 – Ward; D-San Diego) now stands in the process as well as this year’s version of mandating year-round standard time (SB 1197 – Niello; R-Roseville).
AB 1954, which has been retitled the “Protecting Access to Reservations” Act (PAR), will be heard in its first committee of reference (Arts, Sports, Entertainment, & Tourism; Chair Ward; D-San Diego) on April 7 and its second committee of reference (Privacy & Consumer Affairs; Bauer-Kahan; D-San Ramon) most likely on April 16, assuming, of course, that it passes out of its 1st committee on the 7th. Primary testimony in support at the first committee hearing will be provided by representatives of the Cities of San Diego and Los Angeles, both of which are active supporters of the bill. Primary testifiers for the second hearing are being arranged as you read this. We are optimistic that AB 1954 will pass out of both committees to Appropriations, where because we have limited the bill’s remedies to civil causes of action, we are optimistic that it will pass through that hurdle and on to a floor vote, where we are also optimistic about its prospects. Caveat: Optimism is not the same thing as surety. It is never easy to turn a bill into a law in California, and even if the bill passes off the floor of the Assembly, it has to traverse the same process in the Senate AND obtain a signature from the Governor before it becomes the law of California.
SB 1197, another run at making standard time permanent in California, will be heard in its sole Senate Committee of Reference (Energy, Utilities & Communications; Allen; D-El Segundo) on April 7 as well. It escaped out of that committee by the slimmest of one-vote margins last year. Perhaps this year with Committee Chair Allen having expressed deep skepticism about its wisdom last year and Vice-Chair Ochoa Bogh (R-Redlands/Coachella Valley) representing the most golf rich among the state’s 120 legislative districts, the bill won’t pass out of committee. An Alliance can always hope. It met its demise last year in Appropriations and does require a 2/3 floor vote in both houses to move forward to the Governor. Its prospects may be poor, but as we have shared in previous newsletters, its supporters are as funded and organized as they are passionate in their belief that permanent standard time makes for a healthier and happier California. Californians don’t seem to agree with that, which does pose a problem for them.
Stay tuned. We’ll be reporting the results of these hearings, information about some of the other bills of interest we’re tracking in this session, and how things went at Capitol Day on April 15 later in the month.