A county commissioner recently joined about a dozen other commissioners from Indiana in Washington D.C. for a leadership forum designed to help county government officials.
Brian Baird was invited by the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs to participate in the Regional State Leadership Forum. Baird hopes to take what he learned at the forum and use it to help Johnson County.
The trip, which cost between $1,700 and $1,800, was self-funded by Baird. Baird had made a similar trip a few years ago and wanted to make the trip again to learn about what was going on and to connect the county to federal agencies, he said.
"I get a lot of good input and I am one of those those people that like to learn a lot about what is going on," Baird said.
Baird made the trip in late August and has started meeting locally with people to start discussing how to implement some of what he learned, he said.
For example, part of the trip was disaster preparedness and Baird has worked with local officials on the county’s disaster response. Baird also learned that 32 percent of public airports in the country are ran by counties. He learned about the federal and other counties’ response to issues such as the opioid epidemic and cyber security.
“It opens your eyes to things that you do not see and realize that you think are too small for," he said.
They met with Vice President Mike Pence and senior administration officials to share federal, state and local priorities including infrastructure, rural development, disaster recovery and resilience, as well as energy development, according to a news release from the Association of Indiana Counties.
Attendees toured the White House and visited the offices of the National Association of Counties, an organization representing counties across the country.
Commissioners had the opportunity to listen to more than 10 senior administrative officials from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Indiana was one of four states that participated in the forum, according to the news release.
