By Jim Wasserman
jwasserman@sacbee.com

California’s 400-mile Central Valley and its largest metro area, Sacramento, are almost perfect poster children for housing boom excesses that doubled home values, then quickly shredded them in a torrent of foreclosures.

In circles where scholars run numbers and make maps, Highway 99 is a pitiless corridor painted red with danger: damaged credit scores, vacant homes, loan-modification scams, unemployment in the high teens.

How will we view this crisis in 10 years? The topic filled the room Thursday when Modesto-based Great Valley Center took a look ahead at its annual conference in the capital.

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(Sacramento Bee Article published Friday, May. 8, 2009 - 12:00 am | Page 3B)

By Garth Stapley
gstapley@modbee.com

SACRAMENTO - Decisions made at home and at City Hall will determine the Central Valley’s health care fate more than those made in hospitals or at the doctor’s office, a medical visionary said Thursday.Health care providers, after all, try to fix problems that might never develop if parents teach good nutrition and if government leaders arrange communities to avoid excessive driving, said Dr. Richard Pan of the University of California at Davis Medical Center.

“When you think about it, is it health care reform we want or health reform?” Pan asked several hundred people gathered for the Modesto-based Great Valley Center’s annual conference. “In the end, it’s not care we want; it’s health.”

California Secretary of Agriculture A.G. Kawamura says the state’s farmers and ranchers are losing the battle for their image in the eyes of the public.

(Central Valley Business Times Article published May 7, 2009 1:45pm)

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By Garth Stapley
gstapley@modbee.com

SACRAMENTO - Whether the Central Valley becomes a world leader in alternative energy and agribusiness or mired by a poverty-stricken inferiority complex could depend on decisions being made today.That message was sounded Wednesday by various experts addressing hundreds of attendees at the annual conference of Modesto-based Great Valley Center.”We have the ability to decide to survive or to thrive,” said keynote speaker A.G. Kawamura, California secretary of agriculture. “(Just) surviving is not a good thing. Investing resources in our future gives us the chance to thrive.”

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Construction of the California bullet train system could generate as many as 150,000 jobs, says Quentin Kopp, chairman of the California High-Speed Rail Authority in remarks to the annual meeting of the Great Valley Center today in Sacramento.

(Central Valley Business Times Article published May 6, 2009 1:45pm)

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