Missoula County commissioner elected to leadership role for Montana Association of Counties

The Montana Association of Counties (MACo) elected one of Missoula County's commissioners to its leadership team, the first time Missoula has had a voice at the top of the association since the 1980s.

County Commissioner Juanita Vero won the election for second vice president of MACo during the group's annual conference in Missoula on Wednesday. A representative from each Montana county voted.

Because the MACo leadership system cycles its executives into higher positions each year, if Vero stays in office, she will become president of the group in two years.

"Commissioning, it's not political, it's about serving the state and solving problems with solutions with very little resources," Vero said during her campaign speech on Wednesday.

Vero has been a Missoula County commissioner since 2019, when she was appointed to fill a vacant seat. She won reelection to the position in 2020 and will be up for reelection in 2026.

Prior to working as a commissioner, Vero served as a school board member for the Sunset School in Greenough for 20 years.

The last Missoula County commissioner to serve on the MACo executive team was Ann Mary Dussault in the 1980s.

Vero said at the Wednesday meeting that the association must build bridges using trust with residents, business leaders and other groups that might not usually work together.

"If we are going to address housing, public health, mental health, infrastructure, if we are going to have true property tax reform, we need to build bridges," Vero said. "(We need them) with our legislators and with whoever is in the governor's office. We need to build bridges. We need to build trust."

Vero, a Democrat, beat out Commissioner Mark Morse of Yellowstone County, a Republican, for the executive position. Vero also unsuccessfully ran for the position at the MACo 2023 conference.

Ross Butcher, who was the president of MACo from 2023 to 2024, said Vero cares about the work she does and will represent the state as a whole. Butcher is a commissioner from Fergus County and a Republican.

"When you are MACo president, you represent the entire state," Butcher said. "So I am confident that Juanita's going to take that role seriously and recognize that you are not just looking after your corner of the great state, you are looking at the whole state."

Butcher moved from president to past president as a part of the four-person executive team. Commissioner Joette Woods from Liberty County assumed the role of president on Wednesday evening.

Among other duties, MACo represents county interests when new laws are drafted at the Montana Legislature.

Last year, a majority of county commissioners stood off with the state over how much tax money it should collect for school equalization funding. Almost all of the state's county's initially didn't collect the full school equalization amount, leading to a lawsuit in the Montana Supreme Court, which ultimately sided with the state and directed counties to send secondary tax bills.

Vero said urban counties like Missoula and rural counties like Beaverhead County worked shoulder-to-shoulder on the property tax issue, and the group must build bridges as a collective to get solutions on the table.

"We are at a unique moment, MACo is united," Vero said. "Rural-urban politics be damned."

Griffen Smith is the local government reporter for the Missoulian.

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