Page 56 - CASA - ED - AMB 05 30 19

Jessica Gauger

Thursday, May 23, 2019
1:04 PM

Why are you interested in the ED opportunity with CASA?

I am interested in the continued success of CASA generally. I have been working with CASA for my entire professional career. I
have watched them come up and change and evolve from a scattered organization to what we have going today, which is a fantas-
tic organization that is providing an excellent work product. I'd like to think that I have been instrumental in how we have gotten
here. I'd like to keep us on that same path as we move forward. And I think I have a lot to offer in terms of ideas that will help us
move forward in a positive direction.

2. Please describe your most recent position and day-to-day responsibilities.

I am currently the Director of Legislative Advocacy for CASA. I oversee our state and federal legislative programs - our two big
ticket advocacy programs. So what that means is I administer both of those programs for the Association - put together the meet-
ings, run the meetings. Manage all of the bills that we are working on. Right now we are working on a dozen pending bills in the
California legislature - there are varying levels of workload depending on our position. I am the lead legislative advocate for CASA.
On a daily basis managing relationships with legislatures and the folks in different departments. Testifying on behalf of CASA in
front of legislative agencies in the interest of our membership. I will gather information from our membership beforehand and
digest that for folks who are not in the water field. That's on the State side. On the Federal side, I more administer the legislative
program. It is definitely more managing the day-to-day stuff, the programs, and then interfacing with our consultants about how
to act on certain legislative issues and what our position would be and checking off on whether we would like to get involved in
certain programs. If there are legislative items in our communications I am involved. If we are doing events or programming that
has legislative sentiment I will sign off on that or be involved. I do also some content generation and occasionally presentation of
that content for our partnerships and events, or external partnerships and events.

3. What is your assessment regarding current water, climate and other environmental issues California is facing and how do you
think CASA can best address these issues?

Well there are a lot. We're involved in a lot. There are a lot of very current and very pressing environmental issues that we have
to be involved in. One thing I think we have to be cognizant of is that there is always going to be pressure to do more. Whether
it is on the resiliency side, there is always going to be that pressure to continually outdo ourselves, whether it is managing the
currents asks, or being asked to perform at higher and higher levels. We always have to be able to respond to these demands. We
also need to recognize when we need to step up our game a little bit, decide on our priorities. There are a lot of hot topics that
come to mind. There is a desire to reduce discharges from the ocean - that is something that we have been working on quite a
lot. That ties directly into how we recycle more water and how we secure resiliency in the face of climate change and the cycli-
cal droughts that we see. That is something that we are going to focus on. I also see things like micro-plastics and nutrients that
are issues that aren't going to go away, and are issues we will need to hone in on and figure out the best path forward for newly
emerging contaminants.

I think CASA plays a really pivotal role because we are the face of the Association and the membership and so we need to stay on
top of them but also serve as a conduit between the regulatory bodies and the membership and provide that education compo-
nent to our membership about what is going on at the policy level and how they should be aware of it and respond to it. We do
provide that important education component that they otherwise would have to figure out for themselves.

4. Please describe the roles in which you have had a relationship with a board of directors, and what your role was in those ex-
amples. Can you provide an example of when you have had to research a policy, legislative or regulatory item and present your
findings to the Board?