AAC


quite often results — whenever they reach out to the admin- istration. “It’s refreshing for us at a county level to see this level of responsiveness,” says Chris Villines, executive director of the Association of Arkansas Counties. Te Trump White House is doing more than acting as a li- aison between counties and federal departments. It has created a new competitive grant program that will provide $225 mil- lion for rural counties to repair and replace bridges. It’s pro- posed $340 million to clean up sewage that runs from Mex- ico into 25 border counties from San Diego to Brownsville, Texas. Te administration has invited county commissioners to participate formally in the rulemaking process for rewrit- ing regulations, including federal oversight of waterways that some county officials complain burdens them with excessive red tape. “We’ve always had an open door at the White House with recent presidents,” says Matt Chase, executive director of the National Association of Counties (NACo). “What is dif- ferent about the Trump White House is they’re sustaining the outreach. Tey’re inviting any and all county commissioners to tap into the administration It amounts to something of a winning streak for counties, traditionally described by academics as “the forgotten govern- ments” of America. Last year, the Interior Department sent out a record $552.8 million to counties through the payments in lieu of taxes (PILTs) program. Te 2018 law reauthoriz- ing the Federal Aviation Administration included several grant programs that flow directly to counties, which are involved in a third of public airports. Tanks in large part to lobbying from counties, that law also contains a provision limiting the Federal Emergency Management Agency to a three-year win- dow for conducting audits on disaster funds, ending the prac- tice under which FEMA sometimes would “claw back” money from counties a decade after paying out grants. EPA’s brown- fields program offers new liability protections to state and lo- cal governments. In December, Trump signed a five-year farm bill that includes increased assistance for rural counties and schools, allows counties to exclude prisoners from population caps on eligibility for rural development programs and gives them greater flexibility in using federal broadband funds. Policies such as brownfield liability or PILTs aren’t going to make a lot of headlines. Day-to-day issues on which coun- ties and the federal government interact can fly so low under the radar that they don’t command much attention even from policymakers in Washington, let alone the press. But most key state and federal programs have to be executed


by counties when they get to the local level — transportation, Medicaid, public health, mental health and services for chil- dren, youth and seniors among them. Counties own nearly half the roads in the country and are largely responsible for storm water and sewage. Yet presidents and governors rou- tinely have given them short shrift, treating them as places to dump their problems, rather than partners in devising so- lutions. No matter how often county officials parrot the line


FEATURE


that they provide more services than cities do, even to city residents, they rarely have commanded the attention that cities and states are able to claim. Counties have traditionally been treated like red-headed stepchildren by federal officials. It’s al- ways easier to deal with 50 states than 3,069 counties. Counties still aren’t getting everything they might want


from this administration. Trump has made it a crusade to cut back on Medicaid and Affordable Care Act spending; many of those dollars flow through counties. Te president also sought deep cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), still better known as food stamps. Counties adminis- ter SNAP in just 10 states, but those states are home to nearly a third of the people who receive the benefit. Trump’s budgets have called for eliminating Community Development Block Grants, a rare source of flexible federal funding for localities. But to the extent counties are looking for relief from federal


regulations and unfunded mandates, their desires align with the larger goals of an administration looking to slice through the federal rulebook. “We’ve listened to state and local leaders where they think there’s not smart regulation that’s hampering opportunity and growth,” says Doug Hoelscher, who directs the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. “We don’t always give ‘yes’ answers, but I think we give answers on a lot more things than prior administrations.” Every administration takes a different approach to federal- ism. Although George W. Bush had been governor of Texas and selected several governors as cabinet secretaries, his Office of Intergovernmental Affairs functioned as a command cen- ter, giving states and localities their marching orders. Barack Obama, the first president elected from a big city in nearly a century, quickly scored points among state and local officials with a more open approach. Under Obama, HUD, EPA and Transportation at least talked publicly about knitting together programs on the local level in a more collaborative way. But the primary conduit for Obama policies was the nation’s


cohort of big-city mayors. While past presidents tended to do business with states, to the extent they cared about other lev- els of government at all, Obama worked directly with mayors on a variety of programs he couldn’t get through Congress, including minimum wage increases, paid sick leave require- ments, early childhood education and community policing. It made sense for Obama to find common cause with may-


ors. For half a century and more, big cities have been domi- nated politically by liberal Democrats. Counties have been different. Hillary Clinton ran extremely well in 2016 in the biggest ones, carrying 88 of the 100 most populous counties, but that largely was the extent of her success. All told, she car- ried fewer than 500 counties, while Trump won more than 2,500. He took two-thirds of the vote in rural counties and small towns. Paying close, ongoing attention to friendly coun- ties may be rare for a president, but it makes perfect political


See “COUNTIES” on Page 48 >>>


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