Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Page 3
Conference May Resume Joint Meetings With State Bar
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The Conference of California Bar Associations Board of Directors is considering the resumption of joint meetings with the State Bar of California, Chair Margaret Grover said yesterday.
She reported that the State Bar “has indicated an interest in resuming joint meetings, but has not given us specific information on how that would work, so we have not made a final decision at this time.”
The organization, which was previously known as the State Bar Conference of Delegates and then as the Conference of Delegates of California Bar Associations after it became independent of mandatory dues funding, has traditionally met in conjunction with the State Bar Annual Meeting. But the organization announced plans in 2009 to break away and begin holding an independent convention starting this year.
Both the State Bar and CCBA met in Long Beach from Sept 15 to Sept. 18, although the former housed its convention at The Westin Long Beach and the latter gathered its members aboard the Queen Mary.
Immediate Past CCBA Chair John Patton explained that the separation this year was due to the fact that the Westin did not have enough space for both conventions to be held there.
“We got as close as we could,” he joked.
Patton noted that this was the second time the CCBA has met in the same city as the State Bar, but at a different location, with the first occasion being two years ago, in the face of strong opposition by some delegates to the venue selected by the State Bar for its meeting.
In 2009, the State Bar met at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego—owned by the Manchester Financial Group LLC, which was then the target of a boycott based on its chairman’s financial support of the campaign to overturn the right of same-sex couples to marry—and the CCBA met at the nearby Hilton San Diego Bayfront.
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