Valencia
Government
Relations
Committed. Successful. Principled. Political.
Our team becomes your team to navigate the complexities of California government and politics.
Advocacy
Strategic Counsel
Ally Development
About Us
Valencia Government Relations is a leader in California legislative and regulatory agency advocacy, strategic communications, and political counsel in California’s capital city. Our tenacious, skilled, bipartisan team of veteran lobbyists, attorneys, and political campaign veterans devote their 60-plus years of experience to client success.
Representing a spectrum of business, affinity groups, professional and trade associations, and nonprofits, we amplify your message to legislative policymakers and agency leaders to protect your interests and achieve your goals.
Services
We assess your objectives in order to provide precise strategic counsel, and chart a proactive path for your successful engagement with California state government. Lobbying the Legislature, working with regulators, guiding your political action efforts, and ensuring transparent, ethical compliance with the rules of the road – that’s how we serve your interests.
Advocacy
We serve as your principal advocates in the Legislature and before the scores of state regulatory and administrative agencies that affect what you do. Whether in one-on-one meetings, legislative committee testimony, agency hearings, or negotiating with competing stakeholders, we craft, shape, and refine your message and deliver it to the appropriate audience.
Strategic Counsel
First, we listen and learn from you – our client. We work with you to define the issues and the desired outcomes, and any challenges along the way. Our analysis then converts that information into an actionable plan for results – combining research, policy, politics, collaboration, established relationships, and proven tactics.
Coalition Building / Grass Roots Development
When recruiting the power of allies is in your best interests to advance great ideas or defeat harmful proposals, we assemble and galvanize others to the mission. We invest time in assessing your existing network, or help build one, to speak to your point of view throughout the state as well as in the State Capitol.
Political Reform Act
Our experts guide you through California’s complicated Political Reform Act to ensure your political, legislative and governmental ideas become a reality. Our attorney-advocates help clients navigate the state’s lobbying ethics and disclosure minefield as a top priority.
Our Team
John Valencia
John R. Valencia, Esq. is President of Valencia Government Relations, Inc., a leading California government relations firm in California’s capital city. John launched his own firm after serving as Senior Partner and Government Relations Department lead for the region’s oldest law firm. Early in his career, John held increasingly-responsible legislative policy consultant posts, followed by service as a state agency appointee in several state health and consumer affairs agencies.
John co-authored California’s seminal Medi-Cal Drug Rebate Law of 1990, since emulated by over half the states in the U.S. He has been an integral part of each substantive change to that law up to the present day.
Read more about John Valencia
John counsels and represents leaders in the nation’s biotechnology, genomics, biopharmaceutical, research tools and specialized health care industry sectors. He appears regularly before state regulatory agencies. His clients include Fortune 500 corporations, regional businesses, and state associations, nonprofit organizations and individuals.
John is a VSP Global Public Policy Committee Member. He also serves as a Board Director, and Audit Committee Chairman, of the California Prison Healthcare Receivership Corporation, overseeing the state prison system’s compliance with federal court orders. He is a Board Member and Legislative Committee Chair of the Institute of Governmental Advocates (IGA) representing California’s state lobbying corps, and is a long-time member of the California Political Attorneys Association (CPAA).
John is a Past Member and Past Chairman of the City of Sacramento Planning Commission where he oversaw the City’s explosive residential growth and innovative infill and new urbanist projects for a decade. He is a Past Vice President of the Board of Directors of the Sacramento Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. He is Past Chairman of the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) Equal Business Opportunity Program (EBOP) Citizens Advisory Panel. He was also a Charter Member of the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Citizens Advisory Committee and completed a ten-year term as a Member of the District Attorney’s Multicultural Cabinet. He served as Treasurer and Legal Counsel for Women in California Leadership, the charitable arm of the California Legislative Women’s Caucus, and held comparable positions with the California Latino Legislative Caucus Foundation and the California Latino Legislative Caucus Leadership PAC – two independent arms of the largest legislative ethnic bloc in the California Legislature.
John is licensed to practice law in all California state courts, and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California. John’s Bachelor of Arts Degree is from Pomona College. His Juris Doctor degree is from University of Northern California School of Law where he earned Valedictorian honors.
Sara Noceto
Sara E. Noceto, Legislative Advocate, brings over a decade of advocacy, legislative and administrative agency experience and expertise to the Firm.
Sara joined the Firm from her post as Legislative Representative for the California Department of Education where she wrote and managed sponsored legislation for the State Superintendent of Public Instruction. She operated as the liaison for the Superintendent with the legislature, public education organizations, and other government agencies on critical state budget issues and key legislation.
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Sara championed the legislative priorities of the Department, keeping its directors and the Superintendent apprised and engaged on complex public education policy developments. Sara was one of the Superintendent’s trusted Board designees for at the California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS) and was his staffer for the California State University Board of Trustees and the University of California Board of Regents.
Previously, Sara served as an expert Consultant for five years with the California State Senate Office of Research in technology, elections, education and the Census. She staffed the Senate President pro Tempore in Capitol hearings, Senate floor sessions and on legislative site visits throughout the state. Sara worked on the sensitive proceedings of State Senate confirmations of gubernatorial appointees. As the State Senate’s federal liaison on education policy, Sara was charged to breaking down intricate federal and state law, and related legislative proposals, to keep Senate leadership ahead of the curve on developments with potential impact for California.
Prior to joining the State Senate, she spent over four years with the California State Auditor. Here, Sara honed her detail for analysis as an Auditor evaluating the effectiveness of government programs and agencies. She engaged legislative committees on the Legislature’s response to audit findings, developing and guiding implementation of oversight and remedial proposals for change and improvement in program operations.
Sara’s tenure in California public policy kicked off with her position as Legislative Assistant to California’s longest-serving governor, Governor Edmund G. Brown, Jr. There she negotiated on behalf of Governor Jerry Brown with legislators and staff on policy proposals and bills, assessed the political impact of nuanced bill elements and representing the office in communication with lobbyists, statewide organizations, government agencies. As a result of this experience, she became deeply motivated to pursue public policy and to help shape key policies in California.
Sara earned her Bachelor’s degree in Economics and International Relations from the University of California, Davis.
Government relations runs in Sara’s family. Her husband, Doug Drozd, is the Government Affairs Manager for the fast-growing city of West Sacramento in nearby Yolo County.
Sara also serves on the YoloArts Board of Directors, supporting the local arts through arts education programs, exhibitions, galleries, and connecting artists with their community. In her spare time, you can find her making travel plans, running the Clarksburg Branch Line Trail, or complaining about her favorite sports teams.
Alex Khan
Alex A. Khan, Esq. is a Lobbyist and Government Relations Specialist with Valencia Government Relations, Inc. He accumulated over a decade of prior public policy work experience, including positions in the California State Senate, the State Assembly, and Governor Jerry Brown’s Administration.
Alex clerked for Justice Catherine Bamugemereire on the Ugandan High Court of Anti-Corruption in 2013. He also studied under U.S. Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan and Anthony Kennedy (Ret.). After law school, Alex was accepted into Capitol Fellowship Program, where he spent a year working in the office of Senator Patricia Bates.
Read more about Alex Khan
Alex then joined the budget team at the Department of Finance, where he oversaw budgetary issues for the Department of Justice, the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, The Victim’s Compensation Board, the State Legislature, and numerous other state agencies.
Alex returned to work in the Legislature as a Policy and Budget Consultant, covering Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 1 (Health and Human Services) and Human Services policy issues. He went on to serve as the Principal Health Consultant for the minority caucus, before being named Chief Consultant and Legislative Director for the Assembly Minority Leader, Marie Waldron. Alex currently serves as Senior Policy Counsel to the California Chronic Care Coalition, a non-profit alliance made up of more than 30 leading consumer health organizations, which represents Californians living with chronic conditions.
Alex is a veteran of over a half-dozen marathons around the U.S. Alex and wife, Heather, a Senior Business Analyst with a national real estate valuations firm, are devoting much of their home energies keeping pace with their delightful, if very mobile, one-year-old twins, Emma Rose and Maverick, and their sentinel Rhodesian Ridgeback, Justice.
Alex attended the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, Baylor University in Waco, TX, and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Government from CSU Sacramento. A member of the California Bar, Alex holds a Juris Doctor with a certificate in public policy from the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law.
Clients
Contact Us
Office Location
Valencia Government Relations
1001 K Street, 6th Floor
Sacramento, CA 95814
(916) 701-8999
team@valencialobby.com
Valencia Government Relations
1001 K Street, 6th Floor
Sacramento, CA 95814