Meet the candidates 2024: Joe Briggs

Joe Briggs
Commissioner
Cascade County, Mont.

Why are you interested in serving as a NACo officer?
 

I tell my staff here in Cascade County that we are in the “passion” business because anyone seeking wealth, glamor, or an easy road, is not attracted to the daily work of County Government. We are in the business of the delivery of critical services and do not receive much praise. A person without passion for the work of helping people and improving his/her community does not last long in this environment.

It is this passion that drove me to engage with my State Association, where I found that they could assist me and my team in doing more with less AND be more effective. The deeper I got involved in MACo, the greater the returns to Cascade County, so I dove in and worked my way up through the chairs.

NACo is the same; the more involved I get, the more I learn, and the more I learn, the more I can assist my community. I have now had the privilege of working within NACo for over 12 years, serving on the Executive Board for the past 4.5 years, and my involvement continues to pay dividends back to my community.

NACo means a great deal to me, and working as a member of the Executive Committee has allowed me to directly give back to the Association. I am grateful for the opportunity to assist with progressing it to the next level of performance and financial stability.

This is my last term on the Executive Committee, and I would like to give more of myself to our organization’s important work and further assist in its advancement.    I am currently in the second year of my fourth six-year commission term, so should I be elected as 2nd Vice President, I will be able to fully dedicate myself as an Officer without having to worry about a reelection campaign until after I have worked through the leadership positions.

What do you consider to be the two or three most important challenges facing NACo in the near future on which the Officers/Executive Committee/Board of Directors should focus? Why?

NACo is a tremendous organization that routinely outperforms the other associations in the intergovernmental system, but we face significant challenges on several fronts.

There are three issues that I view as the most pressing, the first being the financial issues that developed due to the sale of US Communities, an unfortunate situation caused by the actions of partners outside of our control. This loss of annual revenue needs to be dealt with in a timely manner so that it does not cripple NACo’s ability to continue to perform at its current elevated level.    

Led by the recent and current Executive Committee members, the Board has deployed the proceeds of the sale to not only create reserves that we are now beginning to need to utilize but also a series of investments through NACo Edge designed to build ongoing revenue streams like we had from US Communities. The critical difference this time must be that we are in sole control of our financial future, thereby removing the risk of repeating a similar partner-driven situation. The Executive committee is currently very involved in this effort, and I wish to see it through to completion.

The second issue of concern is the creeping of DC-style partisanship into our nation’s local government systems and subsequently into NACo itself. We must strive to keep our policy statements and interactions on a professional level and never let them become personal. NACo is uniquely positioned 
to build understanding rather than allow our partisan, ethnic, racial, regional, or population differences to divide us. Beneath the surface differences, we all have the same fundamental issues to deal with each day. We all face the same concerns even though our authorities and resources differ. We must lead by example and demonstrate to the federal and state governments how we can all learn from each other by focusing on our agreements rather than our differences.

The other issue of concern I have is finding the answer to the question, “How do we maintain the record levels of membership that we currently enjoy?” Despite how hard Covid was on our counties, it created an opportunity for NACo to shine.

Due to the work of the NACo team, counties of all sizes received a tremendous surge of funding from the Federal Government, and the counties recognized our effectiveness. Former members rejoined, counties that had never been part of the Association came aboard, and very few left us, because they all saw the value that NACo brings. One of our ongoing challenges is to get more of the decision makers in the counties to become involved in NACo so that when the Federal dollars decrease, our members still recognize the value of NACo.

What do you consider to have been your most important contributions to the National Association of Counties to date? What do you consider to have been your most important contributions to your state association of counties?

In my experience, little is accomplished by a single person--it takes a team to move things toward any goal. I operate that same way within NACo, by surrounding myself with the best and brightest I can. Another organization of which I served as National President had a saying, “Success without a successor is failure.” Building a team prevents this failure.

When Ricki Hokama appointed me as Chair of the Telecommunications and Technology Committee in 2014, I was surprised as I had not requested it. I visited with him after the announcement and asked him why he had done so. His response was that T & T was not advancing the type of policies and resolutions needed for NACo to be relevant in that arena. He added, “You have six months to fix it, or I will fire you.”

I took his words to heart, built a team, and began producing the kind of policies and resolutions that were necessary. We did not always get what we wanted on the Hill, but we became relevant, and when
I stepped out of the Chair position three years later, there w. ere great Chairs ready.to succeed me. The T & T committee continues to flourish and advance the issues regarding broadband deployment that
counties and our citizens need. It went from being a target for elimination to a critical and vibrant part of our public policy system.

In Montana, as I rose through the Chairs of the state association (MACo), we had a tremendous Executive Director who was contemplating retirement with no succession plan, some significant structural staff issues, and questions swirling about separating the Insurance Trusts from the Organization. One of my priorities as President was to address these issues. I was grateful for my background in systems analysis, which I acquired as a computer consultant prior to dedicating myself fully to public service. This training and the practical experience I have in applying these skills were incredibly helpful in confronting these obstacles. 
 

Tapping into those skills, my team and I spent a sizable portion of my Presidency analyzing MACo’s financial and operational structures. It would be fair to say that the process made our Exec more than a little nervous, but the results of the effort served the Association well.

By the end of my year as President, we had built succession plans for the Exec and senior staff-one in case of emergency situations and a second that could be implemented for planned retirements. We also fixed the staff structure problems and ended the argument regarding whether the Insurance Trusts should remain inside of the MACo umbrella or become stand-alone entities. The Insurance Trusts remain within MACo and continue to provide not only great service to our members but also assist with stabilizing the Association portion of the operation.

What measures would you recommend to increase and retain NACo membership and to encourage broad participation in NACo by elected officials and employees of NACo member counties? What specific role would you be willing to assume to help build and sustain membership in NACo?

I take my role as West Region Representative very seriously, and as a part of that commitment I have been routinely reaching out to not only individual member counties encouraging their involvement, but also to non-member counties encouraging them to join NACo. The West Region contains 15 states and has the strongest membership percentage of any of the NACo Regions. We are now up to 14 of the states having 100% of their counties as members. According to the last report, we have only 3 counties in the entire West Region that are not members of the Association. (NACo is tirelessly dedicated to counties, which is reason enough to join, but I like to think that my member-to-member outreach has been of some assistance to this gain in membership.)

Additionally, when ARPA Funding was announced, I obtained a list of counties and boroughs that had not yet signed up for funding and contacted all of them in the West Region by phone and email to make sure they were aware of the opportunity that congress was providing. I did the same when the Local Assistance and Tribal Consistency Funds became available. In both cases, I was surprised at the number of counties that were unaware of the availability of these funds.

The point of these stories is to show that there is a limit to what our fine staff can do regarding membership outreach. Elected officials who are active in the Association are the best Ambassadors to their peers, advocating the importance of both staying involved with NACo and joining NACo. It is our stories of how our counties, boroughs, and parishes have benefited from our involvement in our association that will carry the day.

I believe similar outreach efforts like those used in the West Region need to be replicated across the country. This would require the creation of a system that could be utilized by all the board members and officers who are willing to engage. We also need to encourage all State Associations to routinely include training on what NACo is and its value in all their officials’ trainings as well.

Most of the needed materials already exist, but some NACo staff time will be necessary to create templates for things such as emails and written communications as well as talking points for NACo members to use when speaking with their peers. Staff time will also be required to act in a coordinating role to track the outreach as it is occurring, so that no counties, boroughs, or parishes are misse 
As for myself, I will continue to communicate and advocate in the West Region as I have been doing, and should I be elected to 2nd Vice President, I will gladly broaden that outreach to the rest of the country as well as volunteer to assist the NACo staff in getting the system established to facilitate other active NACo members to do the same.