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[disaster, Katrina, pub inv] Cabinet Post for Volunteer Management

California Creates Cabinet Post for Volunteer Management (2/29/08)

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has decided to create a cabinet-level office for volunteer management, the first such state-level office in the country, the New York Times reports. While the governor’s commission for volunteerism, California Volunteers ( http://www.californiavolunteers.org/ ), will retain its staffing and budget, its executive director, Karen Baker, will assume expanded duties as a cabinet secretary. Those duties include playing a role in state-wide disaster planning and re-sponse efforts as well as coordinating volunteers at disaster sites. The office also will manage donations earmarked for disasters in the state, a job currently handled by the state’s Office of Emergency Response. Like many states, California relies heavily on volunteers during natural disasters and other emergencies. While always on earth-quake watch, the state is also prone to wildfires and mudslides. Last fall, more than ten thousand San Diego residents volunteered to assist firefighters and emergency service personnel battling wildfires in the area, even as $23 million in private donations poured into the state. But when a couple of thousand people showed up to help after a recent oil spill in San Francisco Bay, “they had good intentions but [we] didn’t know what to do with them,” said Baker. Schwarzenegger’s wife and California Volun-teers honorary chair Maria Shriver helped make the case for giving the office greater responsibility. Her parents — R. Sargent Shriver, the first director of the Peace Corps, and Eunice Kennedy Shriver, founder of the Special Olympics — relied on and valued the efforts of volunteers in their own work. The creation of the cabinet position comes at a time when the state is facing a budget shortfall of almost $20 billion, and the office will be expected to drum up additional private and corporate support for volunteerism efforts in California. “We have no illusions of this being a substitute for government,” said Daniel Zingale, Shriver’s chief of staff and a senior ad-viser to the governor. “But we do believe there is a role for citizen engagement during tough budget times.”

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