Two Story County officials are meeting with other government representatives in Washington D.C. this week in an effort to raise local awareness and further thwart the country’s methamphetamine problem.

Board Supervisor Jane Halliburton and Story County Sheriff Paul Fitzgerald are meeting with other members of the National Association of Counties as part of the agency’s Methamphetamine Action Group.

“The main thrust of what we’re going to be doing is putting together a draft policy recommendation and revised work plan,” said Halliburton, one of the action group’s chairpersons.

It will be a two-prong process; the action group is preparing background information on the National Association of Counties’ policy recommendations and will use those recommendations when lobbying Congress and the administration, she said.

“We’ll be pulling information from counties across the country and drafting policy so we can have a united lobbying effort,” Halliburton said.

One of those efforts will be to push legislators to re-fund federal programs that have helped local agencies in the fight against meth.

“In the past few years, they’ve been eroding [funds] and now, with the meth epidemic, they’re looking to amend that funding,” Fitzgerald said.

“Working through programs like NACo has been influential on legislators to re-fund programs to where they once were.”

Halliburton said two programs in particular may be affected.

“A conference committee is meeting to discuss the administration’s proposal to eliminate the Bryne Grant and roll it into the Justice Assistance Grant,” she said.

“Both grants have helped provide tools used to fight meth, like the drug task force team. Combing the two programs would dramatically reduce overall funding and significantly make our local response that much more challenging.”

Halliburton said it will also be a good opportunity to learn what techniques are effective throughout the rest of the country.

“It’s such a constantly changing thing that we need to look at because there are so many families across the country that are going to be affected by it,” she said.

NACo and the Meth Action Group have also been in contact with the Congressional Meth Caucus and the Congressional Rural Caucus to increase support, Halliburton said. Both caucuses include Iowa congressmen.

Several U.S. representatives from Iowa are members of both caucuses, and according to the Congressional Rural Caucus Web site, Republican Tom Latham was named to co-lead the new Special Taskforce on Methamphetamine in Rural Iowa.

Halliburton said even though there is some distance between decisions made by the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, the caucuses remain bipartisan to work together to stop the meth problem.

“This is a issue that we must deal with and it must be dealt with in a comprehensive way,” she said.

Fitzgerald said he agrees.

“This is one area we’re able to see legislators from both sides of the aisle working together,” he said.