California State Association of Counties

NACo Presidential Term Ends for Sonoma County Supervisor Brown

July 23 -- "...the best form of government is county government." -- Supervisor and NACo Immediate Past President Valerie Brown

And California counties have been fortunate that Sonoma County Supervisor Valerie Brown thinks so. Wrapping up her one-year term as President of the National Association of Counties (NACo), Brown has spent the past year committed to using her time as NACo President to the fullest capacity, becoming involved in county efforts at the federal level, meeting with local officials around the country, and learning the best practices for sustaining good leadership in tough economic times.

Prior to her election as NACo President in 2009, Supervisor Brown served in the California State Assembly from 1992-1998, where she chaired the Governmental Organization Committee. Brown currently serves as Chair of the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors and is a member of the NACo Board of Directors. As 2008-09 NACo President-elect, Brown chaired three regional NACo hearings on federal health reform in Sacramento County, California, Maricopa County, Arizona and Wake County, North Carolina.

As NACo President, Brown was at the forefront of a number of federal issues affecting counties throughout the nation and was the only elected official who attended early consultations with the Obama Administration on healthcare reform. Her efforts ensured that counties had a significant role in these reform efforts, as well as in securing benefits from the federal stimulus programs. Most recently, Brown led the charge for correcting federal regulatory agency rulings affecting the Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) program and near the end of her term, convened a workshop on the Gulf Oil Spill and its impact on counties in Texas, Alabama and Florida.

Luckily for California counties, Supervisor Brown doesn't plan on stopping now. She intends on continuing to push for energy efficiency, global and local climate protection as well as ensure that the implementation of federal health care reform occurs with minimal cost to local governments.

Clearly, Supervisor Valerie Brown served exceptionally well at the helm of the National Association of Counties and, in the process, brought a great deal of respect and friendship to California counties. All California county officials should be very proud of the manner in which Valerie represented our state.

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State Budget Negotiations are Slow-Going

July 16 -- This week saw little public budget activity in the Capitol, save a debate about the newly-installed "deficit clock" outside Governor Schwarzenegger's office. The deficit clock tracks the days without a state budget (as of this writing, Day 16) and calculates the $52.3 million per day cost of inaction on the state budget, according to the Governor's Office. There was a bit of Twitter back and forth about the notion that the state's budget deficit was growing by that amount daily, when the actual costs resulting from lack of a state budget instead are associated with the amount of time with which the Legislature and Governor have to enact solutions. In other words, the longer it takes to get to a budget resolution, the larger the solutions must be to close the deficit.

Speaker John Perez today announced that the four legislative leaders are, in fact, in agreement on about $11 billion in budget solutions and committed to working on creative solutions to resolve the outstanding balance. While it is a tremendously good that the leaders have been meeting and finding points of consensus, it appears that a final budget resolution is still on the horizon.

CSAC is continuing its efforts to develop policy direction on the Senate Democrats' Restructuring Proposal. Our 2010 Realignment Working Group met again this week to discuss the reports from our technical subcommittees and focused on some of the general themes stemming from each subcommittee discussion. We will continue to work with our technical subcommittees to evaluate the detailed aspects of the proposal, but are also focused on outlining the protections that we believe are necessary to make a realignment or restructuring plan viable at the local level.

There are certainly a lot of moving parts in this game, both from a political and policy perspective. We'll continue to navigate through our internal process and those under the Capitol dome; at the same time, we’ll do our best to get you the most up-to-date information we have.

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