PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE  TO 
THE MEMBERSHIP
By Mack Smith
March 2003

This year is going by really fast, the committees are working full speed ahead and I’d like to thank those of you who signed on for the ride to keep CLEAR moving forward. I hope it’s as rewarding an experience for you as it is for me to participate in what CLEAR does.

The program leadership group in particular has worked extremely hard to put advance information in the flyer for Pushing the Boundaries of Regulation, CLEAR’s annual conference to be held in Toronto this year. 

I’m sure you’ll notice these things when you look over the flyer, but I’d like to mention just a couple of items I think are pretty special this year. To begin at the end, Jean Marmoreo will give the closing address. She’s a family physician who writes a column for The National Post in Toronto. She specializes in mid-life medicine (a timely topic for many of us) and is the organizer of Jean’s Marines, a group of women who run the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C. every year. She’s a fascinating lady and I know you’ll want to plan on staying to hear her.

The kickoff speaker is Bob O’Donnell, director of the Woodstock Institute for Negotiation who’ll share with us what he’s learned in his extensive career as a leadership trainer. In between these two great speakers, we have such presenters as Bob Holsworth and Frances Picherack who will tell us how to “Push the Boundaries of Regulation Through Public Policy.”

This is the first year for CLEAR’s long-awaited Regulatory Leadership Development Training Program, scheduled for September 8-10. There’s also a Testing Essentials Workshop on the morning of September 11 and all the old favorites such as the basic and advanced National Certified Investigator/Inspector Training (NCIT), Board Member Training and Orientation to CLEAR will be there. It’s going to be fun.

Other changes around CLEAR include the establishment of members-only areas of CLEAR’s Web site.  Your username and password will be issued to you upon payment of your dues. Non-members will still be able to access many of CLEAR’s online features, but new publications such as Resource Briefs, committee minutes, the speakers bank and several other items will now require that you sign in to retrieve the information.

Last, I’d just like to mention that CLEAR is expanding its umbrella of services to include association/project management. You really old-timers will recall that CLEAR received secretariat services from The Council of State Governments (CSG) until a few years ago. CSG association management and policy staff provided support to CLEAR and numerous other organizations of state officials as well. When CLEAR separated its business affairs from CSG’s, we took some of the CSG staff members with us to maintain our new association. CLEAR’s house has been in order for many years now and it seems like the right time to put some of our staff’s expertise to work for others. If you know of a group that needs to take the step of acquiring support services, or just needs a hand with a single project, let us know and we’ll have CLEAR Association Management Services (CAMS) contact them.

Please remember that if I can ever be of service to you, don’t hesitate to call on me. In the meantime, like the song says, “I’ll see you in September"……..(in Toronto, of course).

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