The 2025 National Association of Counties (NACo) Legislative Conference was held March 1-4, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Nine Ottawa County commissioners attended the conference, including Jim Barry, Jordan Jorritsma, Doug Zylstra, Jacob Bonnema, myself, Kendra Wenzel, Sylvia Rhodea, Phil Kuyers, and Allison Miedema.
The purpose of the NACo conference is to bring together thousands of elected and appointed county officials from across the country for education and discussion of policy issues impacting counties and constituents.
I appreciated the time in DC, and want to highlight several important and interesting things from the conference.
- The NACo smartphone app worked well and made finding information and navigating to meetings easy.
- I attended over a dozen sessions and meetings on a wide range of topics like human services, immigration, and more.
- There was a lot to talk about during the NACo sessions due to all the changes being implemented by the second Trump Administration.
- Overall, I found many of the policy discussions aligned with the progressive left and Democratic Party.
- I attended the National Conference of Republican County Officials, which was packed to overflowing, a big change from prior years.
Human Services Steering Committee
During the Human Services & Education Policy Steering Committee meeting, the committee passed six left-wing resolutions on topics like birthright citizenship, ICE, and illegal immigration. They also brought in a Democrat staffer who blasted President Trump and his Administration’s policies.
It was sad to watch woke resolutions pass almost unanimously with little discussion. NACo is strongly influenced by left-wing ideology, even though President Trump won the vast majority of counties across the United States and expanded his base by winning larger counties in 2024. (I believe President Trump won about 2,700 of 3,100 counties.)
NACo policy bias was so obvious that one committee member spoke up during the meeting and questioned why the one-sided, partisan resolutions were being proposed, just weeks into the new Administration. The resolutions were highly political, and fully aligned with the Democratic Party.
I was thankful for the opportunity to speak and provide balance to the conversation, offering a pro-Trump Administration perspective on the Trump Tax Cuts.
This was after the Democrat staffer said Trump was giving tax cuts to “millionaires and billionaires.” I reminded the committee (and attendees) the Trump tax cuts help the American people, especially those earning between $20,000 and $165,000 per year.
Corporate Transparency Act
On Sunday, March 2, 2025, we learned Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent stepped in to protect business owners from the unconstitutional and burdensome Corporate Transparency Act (CTA). Those fighting for small businesses contend that Congress did not have authority to enact the CTA, which imposes invasive reporting requirements on 32M law-abiding small business owners, regardless of their activity. There has been a huge amount of confusion on the CTA, so finding out it was going to be stopped while in DC was excellent.
DEI & HRC
I attended two interesting meetings on March 2, 2025. One was the National Association of County LGBT Leaders. During that session, the speaker encouraged county officials not to comply “too early” with President Trump’s executive orders. They also had a speaker named Brittny Pham from the Human Rights Campaign. The HRC is a far-left organization that advocates for abortion and opposes laws that protect children from blockers and sex change surgeries. They also advocate for allowing men in women’s sports and bathrooms.
Pham shared information about how the HRC’s strategies are changing in 2025 because corporations are abandoning DEI. She said they are going to focus on impacting local elections, especially school boards, cities, and counties.
County Administrator Idea Exchange
The next session I watched was led by Kent County Administrator/Controller Al Vanderberg. During that session it was recommended counties work on “rewording and amending grants” to hide DEI language and “make sure county grant subrecipients” are also careful not to draw attention from state and federal oversight.
Al explained to the room he was worried Kent County’s state and federal funding is at risk, due to the county not following all of the state and federal guidance (especially related to DEI) because the Trump administration, Republican Speaker Matt Hall, and Michigan Republican legislators are taking a stand on these issues.
NGOs are seeking to change society and culture from the bottom up.
Local government (especially county & city) is incredibly important for protecting the people and implementing OR opposing the common sense America First agenda.
Learn More
You can learn more about NACo on their website: https://www.naco.org/