House to take up ‘municipal relief’ package

On Monday, the House is scheduled to take up a “municipal relief” package that was released by the House Ways and Means Committee last week.

The bill (H. 4618) includes several key MMA priorities, but it was trimmed significantly from a broader package released by the Committee on Municipalities and Regional Government last month.

The bill contains the following key measures, which are supported by the MMA:

• Pension Repayment Funding Schedule Extension (Sections 1-4): This provision would allow communities to extend their pension repayment schedule by 10 years, from 2030 to 2040, to help amortize unprecedented asset losses experienced during the previous two years.

• Municipal Early Retirement Incentive Program (Section 11): This provision would allow communities, at their option, to implement a municipal early retirement program. The local executive and legislative bodies would have to approve the program.

• Public Safety Mutual Aid (Section 6): This provision would allow communities to establish public works mutual aid programs for day-to-day maintenance and operations as well as broad-based emergency assistance mutual aid programs.

The bill does not currently contain a proposal to give communities the authority to make changes to employee health care plans outside of collective bargaining, a top priority of the MMA and cities and towns. The MMA estimates that giving municipalities the same authority that the state has to make changes in areas such as copays, deductibles and tiered networks would save communities $100 million statewide.

In addition to the issue of health care plan design, the MMA is supporting amendments to H. 4618 in the areas of procurement, telecommunications property taxation, regionalization, the state’s affordable housing law (Ch. 40B), municipal borrowing, elections requirements, unclaimed checks, trench safety, electronic billing, municipal light plants, doubled telephone poles, and the gas tax.

• MMA letter to House urging passage of, and amendments to, “municipal relief” bill