December 3, 2008 Victor Meeting Summary

Dan Sternglass and Curt Dunnam drove to Victor, NY Wednesday December 3rd for a NYS pyro industry dinner meeting with Kevin Frischler (American Fireworks/Utica), Jim Young (Young Explosives/Rochester), Ron Sporyz and Bill Minnich (both WNYPA), at the time, all members of the Working Group.

On the drive back to Ithaca, Dan and Curt give the meeting a score of 8.5/10 (or better!) in the area of general agreement on principal issues and strategy. A quick synopsis of the evening's topics and discussions follows.

Ron Sporyz had some tough questions regarding legislative strategy, and I believe we were able to address these questions to (it appears) everyone's satisfaction. Bill Minnich, who had been aligned with the DOL position last spring, made it clear that he is not very pleased with the DOL's instigation of the Governor's.

Everyone at the dinner was supportive on the current proposed strategy which focuses on passing the interim "Vinny" bill (S7899/A10750) with the assumption that it will take a while to negotiate significant compromises with the DOL that are, in our collective view, required in their extensive proposed explosives labor law update bill.

Importantly, everyone around the dinner table seemed comfortable with the idea of a unified front (this phrase was used a lot during the evening) that includes a vast majority of the NYS pyrotechnics display industry, including 100% of the biggest players; and licensed amateurs.

Ron and Kevin will be separately talking with Felix Grucci, who was reported to be, by the end of last summer's legislative session, strongly behind the "Vinny" bill with the rest of the group. They will be calling him with the idea of discussing the importance of being consistently on the same page with the rest of us in continuing to support the Vinny bill for interim relief while the Working Group continues with Code 39 revisions and others of us concentrate on legislative issues. Reports are that Felix did most of the talking at the October Working Group meeting but that his questions and comments were fairly probing and critical of recent DOL attitudes and actions.

The group also had a frank discussion on the more delicate topic of where the PGI and other licensed amateur activities fit into a unified-front roster of NYS statutory and regulatory goals and what form regulatory relief in that area would take. Without going into the details of the discussion, particularly with regard to the exact statutory allowances that could be made for such activities, suffice it to say that now everyone appears to be fully supportive of modifying the NYS regulatory environment in a manner that would facilitate bringing conventions such as the PGI into NY State, and that would also facilitate licensed amateur "manufacturing" for personal, competitive purposes.

In the bigger picture, it appears that everyone is o.k. with the concept of separation of WG (Code Rule 39/regulatory) and legislative efforts, with the necessity of good communication between those of us pursuing these separate but coherent efforts. Kevin will be the WG liaison to those in the group on the legislative side.