Municipal Empowerment Act awaits action in House

Major sections of the governor’s proposed Municipal Empowerment Act have been sent to the House Committee on Ways and Means and are awaiting action in the last months of the current legislative session.

The wide-ranging bill, strongly supported by the MMA and local leaders, is intended to increase municipal flexibility, reduce administrative burdens, strengthen municipal finances, address municipal workforce challenges, and improve the efficiency of local operations.

After Gov. Maura Healey filed the bill last year, various portions were initially assigned to three committees: the Joint Committee on Public Service, the Joint Committee on Municipalities and Regional Government, and the Joint Committee on Revenue.

The House Committee on Ways and Means now holds the bulk of the bill’s provisions after they were favorably reported out by the Joint Committee on Municipalities and Regional Government.

Those provisions would:
• Make current remote and hybrid public meeting flexibilities permanent
• Reform procurement procedures and regulations, including increasing the threshold for all municipal purchases under Chapter 30B, streamlining cooperative purchasing agreements, and including snow-hauling services with snow-plowing services as exempt from rules of the Uniform Procurement Act (Chapter 30B)
• Extend the borrowing term cap for municipal building projects to 40 years
• Establish enforcement mechanisms for prohibitions on doubled-up utility poles, including the creation of a civil penalty for old attachments to be paid into a Double Pole Municipal Fund.

The Public Service Committee favorably reported out its provisions of the bill to the House Rules Committee. Those provisions would allow flexibility for filling critical workplace shortages and a section that would create an Other Post-Employment Benefits Commission to address unfunded liabilities from non-pension employee benefits.

Local-option revenue provisions in the Municipal Empowerment Act have been sent to study.

The MMA and municipal officials continue to advocate for passage of the bill before the end of the formal legislative session on July 31.