Questions answered by Lamar Paris, County Commissioner
I am attending a National Association of Counties Legislative Conference in Washington, DC this week. It is an opportunity to visit with commissioners from all over the United States and find out what type issues they are dealing with. The following questions are ones I have included to describe the conference.
Q. What is the National Association of Counties (NACo).
A. It is an organization made up of over 2500 counties from all over the United States. Their main function is to lobby Congress in DC to look after the interest of counties all over the country. They have an active lobbying staff and do an excellent job looking after our interest.
Q. Does NACo offer other services to counties?
A. Absolutely. One of their largest programs is the prescription drug discount card. It is offered to all Union County residences and is available at the courthouse at my office. It gives a discount on many drugs that you purchase of up to 25%. Union County has had this service available for two years and so far our residences have saved thousands of dollars in drug cost because of this card.
Q. Does NACo offer any types of insurance to protect counties?
A. Most of our insurance coverage comes from the Georgia Association of Counties, (ACCG) but NACo has a new program aimed at catastrophic care for inmates in jail. Most counties have problems with medical cost for our inmates. We budget nearly $150,000 for medical care for inmates in our county alone. NACo has a new program that we are examining which offers catastrophic coverage for inmates by putting $250,000 medical coverage on inmates with a $10,000 deductible. This could be of great assistance to our county. We recently had a medical bill for over $ 50,000 for an inmate in our jail, which is certainly a budget buster.
Q. Does NACo utilize the committee system?
A. Yes. They have numerous meetings throughout the weekend to establish policies for lobbying Congress. I am a member of the Environment and Land Use Committee which is very active in working with Congress. Our committee seems to always have a contentious issue to deal with and this year it dealt with the many issues related to Cap and Trade, both pro and con. Most now think that this legislation will not come up in 2010 and will be watered down in 2011.
They also have several other committees including Homeland Security and Emergency Management, Justice and Public Safety, Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Finance and Governmental Affairs, Transportation, and Health. Each committee is made up of many members, usually around 50 and it is easy to see how Congress has so much trouble agreeing when it is very difficult to get an agreement out of just 50 people.
Q. Does NACo provide training sessions at the conference?
A. Yes, they have numerous courses that are provided to cover many types of issues that counties have to deal with. One of critical importance to me was “Caution: Budget Cliff Ahead, Recovery Funds and County Fiscal Stability.” We found out that for the first time in history, nearly every county in the country has the same similar budget issues that we all deal with. Not enough revenue and expenses that are too high. Every one is trying to figure out how best to deal with the shortfalls. It was very interesting to see many of the procedures we have used to save money in Union County were also used in many other counties. Also of interest, education budgets getting slashed by the states were a great concern, just as they are here in Georgia.
Q. Is part of the conference involved with visiting our Congressmen?
A. Yes, a key part of this conference will be for many of us to visit with our local Congressmen or their representatives who deal with counties and discuss our local issues. I was able to visit with one lobbying firm who is working to help us with some future transportation funding that we have already been working on for over a year. It is a long slow process, but we are still hopeful that we will have some success by the end of the year.
Q. Did anyone talk about the problem with Stimulus funding being delayed?
A. Absolutely? Members of the Presidents staff explained about the many delays in getting Stimulus projects started. It is also hoped that the majority of stimulus fund spending will actually occur the remaining months of this year. It has been delayed drastically because of government red tape. Union County has as our project, the widening and intersection improvement of Pat Haralson/Pat Colwell intersection which has finally had the bid let and is ready to begin construction very soon. This was a shovel ready project and is yet another example of the tremendous amount of time involved in getting a project built with federal stimulus dollars and a prime example of why it has taken so long to get this money spent in our country. However, we should see many new projects completed this year.