NACo Board plans ambitious 2025

Key Takeaways

County officials who find themselves representing something between rural and urban could find a new home with NACo in 2025, pending the work of an exploratory committee looking at a potential caucus for mid-sized counties. 

That, along with potential regional groups representing the interests of counties in the Great Lakes states and along the U.S.-Mexico border are in the offering for next year, following passage Dec. 7 of a $28.6 million budget during the Fall Board of Directors Meeting in Sonoma County, Calif. 

The Board meeting was part of the County Crossroads Symposium that married programming from the Large Urban County Caucus (LUCC) and Rural Action Caucus (RAC), allowing members to mostly participate in both content tracts. NACo President James Gore, a Sonoma County supervisor, emphasized that caucus programming, like most NACo meetings, was open to all members regardless of their county’s size, and added that mid-sized counties had expressed interest in a caucus for several years.

NACo Executive Director Matt Chase illustrated the interest in the caucus and the flexibility with which NACo leadership has envisioned the group.

“I think Sonoma is a great example — you’ve got four colleagues, one is purely in Santa Rosa and there’s an urban supervisor and then you have one that is totally rural that doesn’t touch any urban,” Chase said to Gore. “We want to leave it up to that individual county official — where do you feel comfortable? We’re not looking to label counties, it’s ‘where do you feel comfortable?’ and you might want to participate in two of them or three [caucuses], so we’re trying to make it very inclusive.” 

Of the nation’s 3,069 counties, 823 have populations between 50,000-500,000 and often face challenges not addressed by LUCC or RAC programming. Officials from those counties account for half of NACo Legislative Conference attendees and 42% of policy steering committee membership.

West Region Representative Joe Briggs, a Cascade County, Mont. Commissioner, spoke to the identity crises that many counties face.

“We need to remember that federal definitions don’t work in this environment either because there is not one singular definition of rural,” he said. “In Montana, I’m an urban county because I’ve got 84,000 people. In half of your states, I’m a frontier county because I have 84,000 people.” 

Having approved the exploratory committee, the Board will review the committee’s findings at its meeting during the Western Interstate Region Conference, May 21-23 in Pennington County, S.D. and the 2025 NACo Annual Conference & Exposition July 11-14 in Philadelphia City and County, Pa. The 2025 Legislative Conference in Washington, D.C. will be held March 1-4. 

The Board also approved committees to explore the creation of regional forums along the north and south U.S border regions, with more nebulous outlook for programming modeled on the Gulf States Counties and Parishes Caucus, which follows a variable, as-needed meeting schedule. The new regional forums would align with new federal regional commissions akin to the Appalachian Regional Commission. The Southwest Border Regional Commission includes counties from California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas and the Great Lakes Authority includes counties from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York.

“The Southwest border group discussed a lot of key issues not always including what you would think — immigration — but instead, binational issues, environmental and infrastructure challenges, international trade public safety and tourism, so not just what you would think is a hot-button issue,” Gore said. “The Great Lakes region talked about a focus on binational and federal collaboration, watershed stewardship and water quality concerns. The Great Lakes, being glacial water, they aren’t replenished at different times by rain and other things. 

“They basically want to be able to have a forum to be able to discuss shared priorities.” 

NACo First Vice President J.D. Clark, a Wise County, Texas judge, will lead the quadrennial review of NACo bylaws along with Clinton County, N.Y. Administrator Michael Zurlo, Berrien County, Mich. Commissioner Chokwe Pitchford, Comal County, Texas Treasurer Renee Couch, Navajo County, Ariz. Attorney Bradley Carlyon, Tennessee County Services Association Executive Director David Connor and NACo Past President Denise Winfrey, a Will County, Ill. Board member. That committee will focus on clarifying the purpose and scope of NACo’s 30 committees, caucuses, task forces and advisory boards, which, all told, involve 1,656 county officials. 

The Board of Directors approved funding to continue the Federal Fellowship Program through 2030. The program cultivates relationships with key congressional and administration staff, familiarizing them with county government functions and the intergovernmental partnership and organizing two county visits per year.  

The top 10

The Board approved NACo’s 10 legislative priorities for 2025, many of which represent a continuation of issues but others take a pointed interest with the advent of a new Congress and presidential administration.

1. Advocate for a fair and flexible tax policy framework that safeguards local revenue sources and flexibility for essential county services—such as preserving the tax-exempt status of municipal bonds and restoring the full deductibility of state and local taxes

2. Pass a bipartisan, multi-year farm bill with the inclusion of county priorities

3. Foster bipartisan support for direct federal investments through county governments, enhancing local investments in essential infrastructure, services and community resilience

4. Promote better outcomes in behavioral health, homelessness and criminal justice systems by modernizing exclusionary policies that restrict local innovation and investment while enhancing incentives and flexibility to support cross-sector collaboration

5. Support counties with federal public lands by fully funding Payments in Lieu of Taxes and the Secure Rural Schools program while also promoting active management, restoration and revenue sharing on federal lands

6. Promote county priorities and local decision-making in land use, environmental stewardship and energy development in federal rulemaking

7. Enhance the nation’s disaster mitigation, response and recovery efforts by strengthening intergovernmental partnerships, modernizing federal disaster policies and building local capacities

8. Expand federal flexibility, incentives and resources to empower county investments, policies and services that support at-risk and vulnerable residents, enhance economic opportunities and workforce readiness and address the housing affordability and accessibility crisis

9. Ensure access to affordable, reliable and inclusive technology solutions —including high-speed internet and emerging AI technologies — while preserving local decision-making, strengthening cybersecurity and fostering innovation to improve county services

10. Maintain election integrity and strengthen election worker safety.

Parting glances

Roy Charles Brooks, who served as NACo president in 2017-2018, headlined the retirements from the Board of Directors. He served as chairman of both the Large Urban County Caucus and the Health Steering Committee during his 20-year tenure on the Tarrant County, Texas Commissioner’s Court. He had previously served for 14 years as chief of staff to his predecessor, attending his first NACo Annual Conference in 1991.

Nearing the close of the Biden administration, Tom Perez, the White House director of intergovernmental relations, said goodbye to the county officials he had worked with over the last two years, his kindred spirits as a former Montgomery County, Md. councilmember. He also served as secretary of Labor in the Obama administration. 

Perez reflected on the transformative effect of the American Rescue Plan Act, which delivered $65.1 billion directly to county governments, with a Dec. 31 commitment deadline for that funding that is quickly approaching.

“The American Rescue Plan was an expression of trust in all of you because you didn’t have to get a permission slip from the governor, the money went directly to you as you know and we trusted you with that money and we trusted you because you are great stewards of that money,” he said. 

Citing examples from how several counties used ARPA funding for local projects, he emphasized the perspective county officials had in making investments with the money.

“That was the community need we wouldn’t have known about, but you were in the best position to know all of that,” Perez said. 

Outreach goals

NACo will end 2024 with 2,615 member counties, representing 85% of all county governments, a drop of only four counties from the association’s all-time high since the end of 2023 and a 99.2% retention rate, while 26 states boast 100% membership. An additional 70 new members could help reach the 2025 goal of 2,685 members.

But as the turnover on the Board indicated, the only constant in county government is change, and Chase encouraged members to reach out to new county officials to help familiarize them with NACo and the opportunities for county input and involvement.

“What makes us successful as an organization is our committee structure,” he said. “We are an organization that’s very dependent on committee engagement and so we constantly have to refill those committees, and we need folks engaged.”