The NACo Board of Directors approved a dues freeze for 2013, making this the sixth year in the row for the Association.
The decision on the dues adjustment, made at the Board’s meeting May 17 at the Western Interstate Region (WIR) Conference, culminated more than a year of research and deliberations that involved the Board, the Finance Committee and the Membership Committee. The board voted to base membership dues for 2014 on the 2010 Census. A county’s population is used to calculate its dues.
The 2014 adjustments include:
- The dues multiplier will be lowered to a flat $0.02 (two cents) from $0.02136; this number is multiplied by the 2010 Census population for each county member to determine the dues.
- Increases and decreases in dues will be capped at 15 percent.
- Minimum dues will be raised to $450 from $400 (counties with populations of 20,000 or below).
- Maximum dues will increase by $5,000 (counties with populations of 2,360,000 and above); and
- Fixed-dues-amount counties in limited county responsibility states will increase a little over 6 percent (Mass. and N.H. only).
Fairness was cited as the primary reason for updating the dues structure. Currently, 1995 Census numbers are used to calculate dues, and population numbers have changed since then.
Under the new dues structure, some counties’ dues will increase and others’ will go down. The approved update takes into account many factors and also serves to temper the effects for those counties that have had large population changes.
