Customer care center, that one is a mess. That makes it difficult to deliver EPA compliance and difficult to improve. There is also a lot of resistance within the public sector to regulate the ecosystem.
What is a hot line for? How do you do it?
Those who really want to participate are many. There’s one local public relations company that spearheads the whole thing. We really do have good local leaders. I call them “benchmarks.” They are people who understand the public policy landscape.
The way we try to stay within the parameters of the actual statutes is to have a very narrow set of people who have the clout to make a major difference. The other step is that we have people who follow the rules. It’s what they will do when they have a chance to do it. The meetings are called “council meetings” and there are lots of meetings. I try to keep them as brief as possible and allow them to have an idea of what’s happening before we speak. There are a couple of aides who are really involved.
There’s support for the idea, but there is also criticism. One person there said to me, “You should have gotten more publicity.” I said, “Why?” Because it’s good publicity. It might be time to talk about flying cars. You have to get the public hooked on it, and if we hadn’t done it, probably nobody would ever realize. I got the feeling that he’s fighting for a lot more jobs than we did at the time.
Is it rewarding to have people come to you to talk?
I often tell the public that I am a big fan of them. I’m comfortable with that because I feel like they’re really good people.
We’ve done this for 15 years, so everyone is familiar with the process. Now we’re just getting started.
One of the biggest challenges has been the judicial system. We have a small, but important group of judges in the state who support working on the issue of EPA. They have an obligation to do something. There was a remark by one of our attorneys-general that I couldn’t imagine their work feeling different.
Everybody’s on board with regulating the ecosphere.