HISTORY AND MISSIONS OF THE VASCONCELLOS LEGACY PROJECT

In 2001, recognizing that he would be departing the Legislature in November, 2004 (by reason of term limits), after 38 years representing the heart of the Silicon Valley, Senator Vasconcellos convened his brain trust to seek a way to sustain the practices and pragmatic outcomes of his collaborative, bipartisan policymaking. As concerned Californians with a history of successful engagement within the Legislature, we recognized several downsides of term limits, including the loss of institutional memory, reduced focus on long range planning, and far less time for mentoring and the development of the experience necessary for effective reform.

As its initial mission, the Vasconcellos Legacy Project collated all of the initiatives generated by Senator Vasconcellos during his tenure into one comprehensive and coherent body of work, which culminated in the creation of the Expanding Human Agenda, a collection of sixteen policy areas that guide us in the practical application of our more faithful vision of our selves, our human nature and potential.

In addition to working toward the advancement of each of those sixteen policy arenas, the Vasconcellos Legacy Project is dedicated to promulgating and advancing a whole new more faithful human politics, which we have named 'The Politics of Trust.' The Politics of Trust, the overarching initiative of the Vasconcellos Project, is a commitment to
spreading the values of collaboration, inclusion and trust in public policy making for the people and state of California. This commitment brings forth a dedication to supporting and developing diverse civic and community leaders who embody these values. The Politics of Trust is working to provide all Californians with the opportunities, the
training, and the tools necessary for participation in a collaborative policy making process.

The Vasconcellos Project has now defined its overall pragmatic operational mission as "Supporting our term-limited Legislature in developing working models for tackling California's major challenges expeditiously." By that we mean to help legislators figure out how to proceed within their truncated term-limited tenure to get themselves up to speed, conduct a smart comprehensive public participatory learning process, and come up with the ways (policy reforms) and the means (via the enlistment of key advocacy groups) for empowering themselves to complete such efforts with their actual enactment of their findings and recommendations into law, prior to their departure from the Legislature.

DEMONSTRATION PROJECTS

The Vasconcellos Project has recently embarked on two demonstration projects that put the Politics of Trust into action and provide real world models for deliberation and policy creation through an inclusive, participatory, collaborative processes.

The first is the Ed Davis/Al Alquist Capitol Collaboration Project, in which former Democratic Senator John Vasconcellos and Republican Assembly Member Bill Bagley have enlisted a bipartisan team of 78 former Legislators from across the political spectrum - we have chartered our group as CAL/FLAG - the California Former Legislators Alumni Group - to offer mentoring toward building positive relationships and collaborative practices, especially with first-term Legislators, with a goal of enabling them to more effectively meet the critical challenges facing our state in these rapidly changing times.

Our second demonstration project addresses higher education, and aims to update California's Master Plan for Higher Education, which has been widely credited with laying the foundations for our California world-leading economic and social growth and prosperity over these past 45 years. Our proposal is to support the Legislature in designing and operating all the way to its enactment into law prior to term-limited departure of leading key leigslators in the updating and re-enactment of the California Master Plan for Higher Education. We hope to provide the institutional memory, a ready current status check, the development of a needs based assessment regarding California's future well-being, together with a design process calculated to gain the knowledge and build the key constituencies essential to carrying this effort to enactment and fruition within the constraints of term limits.

We are out to show the Politics of Trust can - and indeed does - work. By doing so, we hope to educate, inspire and empower others to advance the Politics of Trust in their own lives. We want those who we come in contact with to tap into their own potential and apply it to the political and social realm - thus creating pathways to bring out the potential in others.

We invite you to contact us with your comments, questions, and suggestions, and to find out ways that you can help enact the Politics of Trust!