Leg conference features top-notch speakers

More than 1,600 delegates expected at #NACoLeg Feb. 20-24

Unlike Las Vegas, what happens in Washington doesn’t stay in Washington. It has ramifications across the nation’s 3,069 counties.

Delegates to NACo’s 2016 Legislative Conference Feb.  20–24 in Washington, D.C. will have opportunities to hear from — and speak to — nationally recognized thought leaders who shape the policies that redound to the benefit or peril of counties.

“Counties and our residents feel the effects of countless decisions made in Washington,” said NACo President Sallie Clark.  “We are here to work with our federal partners because their actions profoundly impact Americans on the ground, where we live and work.”

More than 1,600 delegates are expected to attend the conference, which will feature prominent speakers from Congress and the Obama Administration.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) will address delegates during the conference’s closing session on Feb. 23. HUD Secretary Julian Castro will be the featured speaker at the Large Urban County Caucus (LUCC) steering committee meeting, and Acting Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. will address one of the general sessions.

France Cordova, director of the National Science Foundation, will speak during the conference’s Opening General Session. She is a former president of Purdue University who earlier served as NASA’s chief scientist.

A bipartisan group of governors will discuss how states and localities are working together to tackle chronic rural poverty in a roundtable discussion Feb. 22 led by U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, himself a former governor of Iowa. Democrat Govs. Terry McAuliffe (Va.) and Tom Wolf (Pa.) will be joined by Republican Govs. Bill Haslam (Tenn.) and Gary Herbert (Utah). 

The following day, Vilsack — along with other experts and Administration officials — will also participate in a White House Rural Council Poverty Summit, being held at the conference, which is open to all conference attendees. 

NACo’s steering committees will meet to consider a number of policy resolutions, dealing with issues such as full funding of the 2002 Help America Vote Act, raising the federal minimum wage, aid for counties in complying with HUD’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing final rule and reauthorization of the National Flood Insurance Program.

A Chief Information Officer Forum precedes the official opening of the conference, where county CIOs and elected leaders will exchange information about the technological challenges facing their counties.

More than 20 educational workshops are being offered, exploring topics such as the Affordable Care Act’s Cadillac tax, the opioid drug abuse epidemic, freight traffic’s role in stimulating local economies and reducing mental illness in jails. Several professional development workshops are also on the agenda.

A Capitol Hill briefing is on tap Feb. 23 on counties’ role in America’s criminal justice system — how counties are creating innovative systems and developing unique partnerships to lower rates of incarceration and recidivism in local communities. Conference attendees will also use their time in Washington to meet with their congressional representatives.

No conference in a presidential election year would be complete without hearing from the national news media, this year in the persons of Ron Brownstein, political director for the Atlantic Media Co., and Chris Wallace, host of Fox News Sunday.

The conference will pivot, briefly, from serious to silly on Feb. 22, when The Capitol Steps are sure to lampoon the presidential candidates in comedy skits and song.