Commissioner Randy Maluchnik has been a consistent national voice to promote the arts and culture at the county level. He served as chair of the NACo Arts and Culture Commission for five years—a record—and still serves as a vice chair, helping to ingrain arts and culture policy topics into NACo’s overall work. Through his work as chair of the Arts and Culture Commission, NACo members get to experience arts and culture at each of the national conferences through musical performances, military bands, and theatrical performances.  In addition to his national work, Maluchnik has been a champion for the arts locally, to include assisting the Arts Consortium of Carver County and bringing art into the County’s Government Center. He backed an effort to display rural farm art outside of the County Board Room. The effort beatified the area, served as a reminder of the agriculture base in a fast-growing county, and captured historic barns which are quickly disappearing from America’s landscape. Commissioner Maluchnik also spearheaded a veterans writing event. He worked with the library and local Veteran Services Office to bring in a speaker to assist veterans with writing about their military experience as a way to document their honored service and also as a therapy to assist veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder and use art as a way to treat community mental health. 

“The true value of arts and culture in our communities goes far beyond an aesthetic value but can provide solutions to economic opportunity, mental health, addiction problems, assisting our returning veterans as they reintegrate back to their communities and much, much more,” said Commissioner Maluchnik. “Public officials should use the arts as a solid tool in developing policy that can make our communities a place to live, work, play for a lifetime.”