April President's Message

Dear IAF Members and Industry Friends,

If you read my first Handshake (and I know you did), you might recall a reference I made to AAF meetings I used to attend to when I was younger. Our Industry always seemed to be dealing with some sort of crisis or another. Well, here we go……As we work through what is supposed to be a beautiful Spring, our industry is scrambling to address two different storms a brewing, one in Tallahassee and one in Washington DC. The former centers around De-Regulation bills that if passed would repeal the Electrical Contractor’s Licensing Board (ECLB) along with certain continuing education requirements. Our Lobbyist and Legislative Committee are doing everything we can to prevent this from happening. I traveled to Tallahassee earlier this week and met with many Representatives and testified in front of the House Commerce Committee. 

While most of us business owners welcome some sort of deregulation, these concepts need to be well thought out, always keeping the interest of the public at large first. Only time will tell how this political drama plays out and trust me when I tell you this one has had many twists and turns, but I can assure you that we will fight to ensure that our system of government upholds the high standards that we are accustomed to.

The latter storm, which is coming from our Federal Government centers around the impact that Import Tariffs will have on our Industry, which is heavily reliant upon imported electronic components. I will leave the discussion on whether or not Tariffs will benefit us in the long run for another day, but the reality is that any disruption to our usual business processes make business leaders nervous. It seems that every meeting I have had recently has had either De-Regulation or Tariffs being discussed. As a State Association, IAF will monitor and communicate to our members on Federal related issues, but it will focus its energy on advocating for our Industry on issues arising out of Tallahassee.

This leads me to the last point I wanted to convey this month. In order to get traction in our Representative form of Government, we need to apply pressure, make friends, etc. A modern political tool used broadly is a Political Action Committee, or a PAC. Luckily at IAF we have a PAC in place.  If you have not signed up for our Clay Shoot, please join us. The Clay Shoot was conceived by the Board to raise money for our PAC, and the last few days’ development only amplify the need to have a nice war chest sitting in our PAC account, ready to wage advocacy campaigns as needed. If you cannot attend, at least please consider making a contribution to the PAC, any amount will help.

When I am asked, why should I join IAF? What do you do for your membership? Well, I like to answer that one of our pillars, is Advocacy for our members, to be the voice that defends our interests.

I have a lot of trust in our system, and while we may wiggle a bit to the left, may wiggle a bit to the right, in the long run, we always seem go forward!

Raising the Bar - One Achievement at a Time,

Diego R. del Pino
IAF President