Joyce Mojonnier

Joyce "Sunny" Mojonnier (born 17 February 1943)[1] is an American politician who served as a California State Assemblywoman for the 75th District.[2] Mojonnier was the 30th women elected to serve in the California Legislature. She served from 1982 through 1990.

Career

As a State Assembly Member, Mojonnier Served four, two-year terms as the elected representative to the 375,000 constituents of the 75th Assembly District. She served on the following committees: Rules, Ways & Means, Judiciary, Governmental Organizations, Education, (and Subcommittee on Education Reform), Labor, Economic Development & New Technologies. Established and chaired the Task Force on Child Abuse and the Judicial System. Served as Chairperson of the Joint Committee on Surrogate Parenting and the Subcommittee on Arts & Athletics. She also served as vice chair of the Joint Committee on the 1992 Quincentennial. Also served as a Member of the Select Committee on Genetic Diseases and a member of the Arts, Tourism and Cultural Resources Committee of the National Conference of State Legislatures. Member of the Committee on Suggested State Legislation for the Western Legislative Conference.

Mojonnier successfully authored and carried the Hazardous Medical Waste Management Act which served as the national model for medical waste clean-up. She also successfully authored and carried major mental health legislation that improved patient care, successfully authored and carried Closed Circuit Television Testimony for use in the Courtroom which led to protection of child victims and eliminated the need to transport violent offenders for arraignments, thus limiting escape during transport, successfully authored and carried legislation to require Children's Waiting Rooms at courthouses resulting in the elimination of trauma and victimization of young children in an often unfriendly & threatening circumstance, and successfully competed for tax dollars needed to safeguard interests of San Diego and the 55miles of California coastline, protecting and improving quality of life in the 75th Assembly District.[3]

Mojonnier was the founder in 1983 of Capitol Network, a network for female legislative and administrative professionals in Sacramento.[4] Mojonnier said, "Creating a name that spoke to the purpose of our existence and a logo that would become a recognized standard of opportunity and empowerment for women was my first step to the birth of CAPITOL NETWORK. Building an organization that could and would withstand the test of time is never an easy task." Mojonnier is a firm believer that so much can be accomplished through humor and fun and so it was both humorous and fun for everyone of the dinner guests to find out that their waiters were Speaker Willie Brown-D (whom the Sacramento Bee called "Willie the waiter") and Assembly Minority Leader Bob Naylor (the Bee made note of his black bow-tie with flashing red lights), Senators Jim Ellis-R and Art Torres-D, Rod Blonion and Dave Sterling from the Governor's administration and several others. At that historic dinner were more than sixty of the best and the brightest, most dynamic and successful women ever to grace the halls of the Capitol. And that was the beginning of CAPITOL NETWORK.

In 1990, she was defeated for reelection by San Diego School Board Trustee Dede Alpert.[5]

In 1992, Mojonnier was appointed by Assembly Speaker Willie Brown to serve as Commissioner on the California Medical Assistance Commission. The California Medical Assistance Commission is responsible for negotiating contracts with managed care plans and hospitals, on behalf of the California Department of Health Services for specific services, under the Medicaid program in California (called Medi-Cal). The goal of the Commission is to promote efficient and cost-effective Medi-Cal programs through a system of negotiated contracts fostering competition and maintaining access to quality health care for beneficiaries. She was responsible for review and oversight of approximately 90 of the 275 hospital contracts annually. Performance of these responsibilities resulted in the following: establishment of contracts for services securing quality medical care for medi-cal recipients with approximately 90 hospital providers annually, establish an estimated $1 billion annual savings for the State General Fund, as well as development and implementation of the managed care system.

In 2014, Mojonnier founded a non-partisan, non-profit organization to collect the history of the women that have served in the California Legislature. Video-recorded oral histories are being produced and memorabilia is being collected from these female former members of the legislature, with the goal in mind that a museum is in our not so distant future. 2018 is the Centennial of women elected to serve in the California Legislature. Mojonnier has been CEO of WOMEN IN CALIFORNIA POLITICS FOUNDATION & MUSEUM (WICP100) since the beginning and has worked on producing the Centennial Celebration events since January 2017. Centennial Celebration Events were held on Monday, June 18, 2018 at the California State Capitol and the California State Library Exhibit Halls. WICP100 has been recognized as having the largest collection of Video-recorded oral histories and historical memorabilia on California's female legislators.[6]

References
  1. Candidate biography. Join California, retrieved April 28, 2009
  2. NAZ (2005-01-10). California Women in Government: Members of the Legislature Archived 2009-05-04 at the Wayback Machine. California State Archives, retrieved April 28, 2009
  3. Sunny Mojonnier - biography. AP Computer Learning Time, retrieved April 28, 2009
  4. Admin. (2009-06-02). Welcome to the beginning..... of empowerment for women. Capitol Network, retrieved April 28, 2009
  5. http://www.joincalifornia.com/election/1990-11-06
  6. http://www.wicp100.org
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