Pat Dando announced that she will be leaving the San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce after a six-year stint as head of the local group. “It’s time for a new chapter for me, personally and professionally,” she explained. She added that she wanted to wait until the elections were over before announcing her decision.
Dando’s high profile public career began in 1995, when she was elected to City Council. She spent ten years as a city council member, and went on to serve as vice mayor before leaving to work with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger briefly as a public liaison. From there she went on to become President of the Chamber, succeeding Jim Cunneen.
The Chamber went through a series of dramatic changes during her tenure. It relocated to its current offices, and it became more politically active, culminating in its successful 2006 campaign to get Chuck Reed—a former chair of the Chamber’s board—elected as mayor. It also defeated the city’s campaign donation limits on independent political groups, giving the body more clout in the succeeding elections. Most recently, it played a big role in the fight over arbitration and pension reform for municipal employees.
Dando inevitably found herself in frequent clashes with the city’s powerful unions, led by the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council. Upon hearing of Dando’s resignation, it released a statement saying that it “looks forward to working with the new chamber CEO and its board of directors in making Silicon Valley a place for families to prosper and flourish.”
Dando has no immediate plans for the future. She says she wants to spend more time with her husband, visiting her grandchildren.
Read More at The Mercury News.
Good to see her go. How about hiring actual talent instead of handing the post off to another pathetic insider.
Na na na na. Na na na na. Hey, hey, hey. Goodbye!
Chamber has an opportunity to finally break South Bay Labor’s stranglehold on San Jose politics and years wasteful budget spending that benefited labor and their allies while taxpayers got little or nothing for billions taxes spent
Public and businesses gets higher taxes and less services while city employees using their political power retire at 75 – 90% and many within a few years make over 100% of their final pay and free medical care
Chamber like inept Republicans have blown many opportunities to elect qualified Council members to make San Jose the jobs and business Capital of Silicon Valley by not understanding what is important to voters and poorly communicating San Jose problems and solutions
San Jose under labor’s leadership is a mismanaged braggart city who should be called ” Budget Deficit Bedroom Capital of Silicon Valley ” compared to other well run jobs rich local cities
> ”Budget Deficit Bedroom Capital of Silicon Valley”
Hmmm. Possibly accurate, but lacking a certain melodic poetry.
SBLC losers probably see a ray of hope here. But in the grander scheme of things, I think their time has come and gone.
Yeah now that she got Measure K passed she’s gonna have a lot of calls for casino lobbying consulting work. Was I the only one that noticed that she co-sponsored that and her comment about knowing when to fold them when that lobbying group sued the city. Sorry for the lack of citations but she pulled a fast one on every last one of you, and I like playing cards!