County officials set for trip to Chicago

By Bill Donovan
Staff Writer

GALLUP — County officials are doing it again: taking a number of county officials on a trip to some far-off city to attend the National Association of Counties meeting.

Last year's meeting got plenty of media attention at least locally because the site of the convention was Hawaii and about 10 county officials, including the three commissioners, went.

This year's site is Chicago and about the same number of officials including all three commissioners are attending the four-day event, which begins on Friday.

County Attorney Doug Decker, who is one of those going, said this will actually be a six-day trip since county officials on leaving on Thursday and coming back the day after the event ends.

But county officials are saying that this is one of the most important trips county officials will take since topics are discussed that have a direct bearing on the problems that a number of county departments are facing.

For example, said Decker, one of the meetings that he is planning to attend deals with consent decrees and how to make them less offensive to counties.

Decker said this is a subject that county officials know a great deal about because some 25 years ago, the county had to sign a 20-year consent decree with the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice over allegations that the county was not doing enough to get Native Americans in the county to register and go to the polls.

The county was under that decree for 20 years and Congress is now looking at changing the way consent decrees work so that the party that signs the agreement can go back to court during the time the consent decree is enforced to make changes.

Under current law, that's not possible, and the county had to abide by having Justice Department officials monitor every election during that period.

But Decker said the National Association of Counties is supporting changes that will allow counties to go back to court if they have showed good-faith efforts to abide by the agreement and the changes being sought have occurred.

Billy Moore, the chairman of the county commission, is scheduled to be on one of the panels dealing with energy and land use.

County Manager Tom Trujillo, who is also going, justified last year's trip to Hawaii by pointing out that the national association decides where the site of the convention will be and makes that determination in part on how many rooms are available since almost every county in the nation sends a multitude of people to the convention.

While the exact cost of the trip won't be known until the trip is completed, Trujillo said that he expects the cost to go to Chicago won't be that much cheaper than Hawaii. While the rooms will probably be cheaper, he said, airline flights will probably cost more because of the increases in fares due to rising fuel costs.

As for Decker, he said that even though it wasn't Hawaii, he was looking forward to the trip until he heard reports in the media about the heat wave Chicago was in the midst of and the fact that some sections of Chicago have been affected by brown-outs because of the rise in electricity demand.

With almost all of the high-ranking county officials going on the trip, Millie Wall, who is director of information technology, will be the person in charge of the county for those six days.

But Trujillo said he will remain in constant contact with staff officials here during the trip; so, if there is an emergency, he will be able to respond to it as quickly as possible.