1) Consider the underlying issues that need to be addressed more effectively at a regional level, including

• Population growth, land use decisions and settlement patterns
• Environmental protection to ensure healthy water and air
• Energy generation and use
• Community planning and investment for infrastructure, including transportation, affordable homes, schools, open space/habitat, and working farms and forests
• Economic development strategies, including workforce development
• Improving social relations among people of different ethnic, racial and income backgrounds
• Government efficiency and accountability
• Citizen participation in local public affairs

2) Consider the current state government roles and responsibilities in these areas, to identify barriers to greater regional collaboration in addressing these issues.

3) Research and document current best practices within the state government for encouraging and supporting regional collaboration, and the best practices of other state governments.

4) Reach out to California's local leaders, from government, business, civic, and community organizations, to ensure that the barriers are understood correctly and to solicit ideas for removing those barriers.

5) Develop near- and long-term opportunities for the state government to adopt policies and strategies (including new programs or program reform, improved employee practices, new ways of structuring state government activities, and others) that would encourage and support regional collaboration.

6) Develop goals and standards for measuring the success of these new policies and strategies, and a mechanism for tracking and communicating performance on these policies and strategies to the state government and California's citizens.

7) Recommend such other next steps that would build upon and extend the work of the Commission.

More specifically, the Commission will attempt to answer the following questions, using ad hoc Working Groups to bring findings and recommendations to the Commission as a whole:

1) State/Local Fiscal Relationship. How can the state government ensure permanent, yet flexible revenue sources adequate to support local government services; remove the fiscal disincentives that result in unsound land use planning decisions (primarily, the fiscalization of land use); create incentives for sound regional infrastructure planning and investment; and encourage and enable shared responsibilities across jurisdictions and interdependence across entire regions?

2) Collaborative Regional Planning. How can the state government help local governments and the civic and business sectors to employ effective regional strategies to meet the challenge of population growth? In particular, and beyond finance strategies (see above), how can state government encouraged and support local governments to more effectively collaborate in planning for land use, transportation, housing, and open space protection?

3) Economic Development. What needs to be done to support our economic regions to compete effectively in the New Economy and the global marketplace? How can the state assure that its policies, investments, and agency practices support effective, coordinated regional strategies in economic development, education, workforce development, research and development, and infrastructure development? What can be done to steward our natural capital to stimulate long term development?

4) New Governance. What problems are beyond the ability of any one municipality or
county to handle? Which of these problems are better addressed by localities acting in concert rather than by the state? In other words, which of the problems confronting California should be handled on a regional basis? Most importantly, how should regions address these problems? And how can the state government foster and support such collaboration?

5) Citizen Engagement. How do we build civic awareness of regional problems and a more effective participation in regional policy making among the citizens of the state? How can state government encourage and support local governments to work with regional civic organizations and others to arrive at regional solutions?

The work of the Commission itself will try to model:

• The effectiveness of collaboration, by ensuring the diversity of Commission membership and encouraging frank and open dialogue among Commission members;
• The power of innovation, by being willing to think boldly, yet pragmatically, about new policies and strategies;
• The responsibility of stewardship, by embracing the connectedness of our economic, social, and environmental challenges, and our shared responsibility for meeting those challenges;
• The moral authority that derives from inclusion, civic engagement, and accountability, by encouraging participation in Commission events from diverse organizations and perspectives from throughout the regions of the state; and
• The commitment to action, by developing recommendations that lead to real, tangible, regional and community improvements in the near- and long-term.

Over its one year lifetime, November 2000 to November 2001:

• The Commission will explicitly adopt a vision and values statement, so as to be "transparent" with respect to the underlying principles that guide its work.
• Meet at least ten times as a whole, with as many meetings as member schedules permit being held in various regions of the state.
• Draw on the knowledge and experience of a wide variety of policy and program experts who have studied and/or worked at regional collaboration and have much to offer. In particular, the Commission will draw from the work of prior Commissions such as the Speaker's Commission on State/Local Government Finance and the Commission on Governance for the 21st Century, as well as concurrent Commission work, such as the Governor's Commission on Building for the 21st Century.
• Use state-of-the-art information technologies both to conduct the business of the Commission and to enable a broad spectrum of Californians to learn about and participate in the Commission's work.
• Publish, electronically and on paper an interim report, about March or April of 2001, and a final report, by November 2001. Ensure that this report is widely available and communicates effectively to policymakers, the media and a wide variety of statewide and regional organizations interested in regional collaboration.