NDCCA Approves National Participation Matching Funds

Posted 3/03/22 (Thu)

50% Reimbursement Available to One Commissioner per Region

Jeff Eslinger | County News Editor

At its December meeting, the North Dakota County Commissioners Association Board of Directors (NDCCA) voted to set aside money to encourage increased participation in National Association of Counties (NACo) events.

NDCCA will reimburse 50% of the registration and travel expenses of one commissioner from each of the state’s eight commissioner caucus regions, up to a maximum of $1,500.

NDCCA President Chad Peterson said of the offer, “I am so excited about this opportunity for Team North Dakota. As I’ve been saying for years, everything you are experiencing, others are going thru it now or have gone thru it before, so why reinvent the wheel? The amount we can learn from one another will save time and resources. You’ll learn from peers, learn about programming available to you and grant opportunities that you can leverage to get the job done in your county.”

The three events eligible for these scholarships are:

1. Legislative Conference – typically held late February or early March in Washington, D.C.
2. Western Interstate Region Conference – typically May, rotating between host states
3. NACo Annual Conference – July, rotating various states

Commissioners were emailed an application form in late January and asked to submit it by March 15. If multiple applications are received from one region, commissioners in that region will be asked to choose; if a region has no applications, however, they may forfeit their scholarship to someone from another region.

Participation in national events has the potential to pay great dividends for North Dakota counties, from input on national policy to becoming educated on available federal resources. For more information or to indicate interest in taking advantage of this opportunity, commissioners are encouraged to contact the NDACo office by March 15 for the WIR Conference, and by April 15 for the NACo Annual Conference.

More information and the application form are available at www.ndcca.org/board/matching.