White House Conference Recap

As a reminder, I bore the full cost for attending this conference.  The cost to taxpayers was $0.

I wanted to post a recap on my visit to the White House, where I represented Washington County at a conference held by the White House.  They held the conference in the Eisenhower Executive Building, which is on the White House property, next to the West Wing.

The highlight of the event was hearing from our Vice President, Mike Pence, who is an amazing speaker.  We also heard from Scott Turner, a former NFL player who now leads the President's efforts to revitalize opportunity zones.

A few key themes I took away

• New levels of engagement with local communities.  Previous White Houses have not engaged local leaders in a capacity that is anywhere close to the engagement of this White House.  Not only is the office of Intergovernmental affairs very actively engaging with local leaders, but they have embedded staff with each federal department so that we have direct contacts on any questions we may have.  More importantly, we have been given the full list of those people.  In other words, we don't have a barrier with knowing who to ask, which is often a large barrier in dealing with the federal government.  I hope future White House Administrations (both Democrats and Republicans) will continue these effective inter-governmental practices.
• Commitment to 2-way communication.  This White House is committed not just to talking to local governments, but also to hearing from local governments.  Half the time at this conference was spent letting us ask them questions that we had.
• Support USMCA.  The only thing the White House is asking from us is our support in engaging congress to pass the replacement for NAFTA, called the USMCA.  For Washington County, we have quite a few dairy farmers who will benefit from the ratification of this agreement.

The topics they discussed with us included:

• Small Business Support
• Agricultural Support
• Disaster Recovery and Resilience
• Community Revitalization

Meeting Other Elected Leaders

I met several other County Board Supervisors & County Commissioners, and had some great discussions.  The most interesting was with a Lady from a rural County in Minnesota.  Her County Board has only 5 Commissioners.  She also serves on several boards, including a Library Board and Agricultural Board, that have more than 20 members.  She saw the smaller board size as more effective in getting things done, and is trying to reduce the size of the other boards she is on.  Given our current discussions on County Board Size, I thought this was a very informative discussion.

Eisenhower Executive Building

Myself and William Crozer, Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Director

Attendees with our Vice President

Vice President Mike Pence

Fellow Washington County Supervisor John Bulawa, who

also represented our County at the conference

The 10 County Board Supervisors from Wisconsin who attended the conference

Here is my original post about the White House Conference, from when I was first invited: http://district3bossert.blogspot.com/2019/07/white-house-bound.html.

#stateleadershipdays