Lame Duck Legislative Work Underway; Sign up for Inside 208 Updates!

The Lame Duck session of the state Legislature is in full swing and there are a number of key issues potentially impacting your communities that the Michigan Municipal League is working on and watching. WE MAY NEED YOUR HELP over the next several days as the Legislature currently has session scheduled through Dec. 15.

For regular updates on what is happening, the League strongly encourages you to sign up to receive email alerts from our Legislative blog, Inside 208. Please go here and sign up in the “subscribe” box on the right side of the page by typing in your email address. This is a free service provided to League members and you will receive emails each time a new Inside 208 blog is posted about the latest Legislative activity happening in Lansing. As issues arise, the League will be posting regularly on Inside 208 and we may be asking you to contact your Legislators on various bills.

Currently, there are multiple pieces of legislation the League is following that could have both a positive and/or a negative impact on your communities.

Some of major issues we have blogged about so far include bills to reform Other Post-Employment Benefits (OPEB) or retirement health care, changes to Tax Increment Finance (TIF) Authorities, a bill that limits local control on transportation network companies and taxis (think Uber and Lyft), new economic development tools, and potential energy reform.

Please help us by signing up to receive our Inside 208 blog emails during this quickly-moving, ever-changing Lame Duck legislative sessions.

Matt Bach is director of media relations for the Michigan Municipal League. He can be reached at mbach@mml.org and 734-669-6317.

MIRS article related to a OPEB issue.

In case you didn’t see it, there was a recent article in MIRS quoting Governor Snyder as suggesting municipal retirement health care reforms could be considered during the upcoming lame duck legislative session. This is an issue that the League has identified as a key cost driver for communities (www.SaveMICity.org) and is a major area of interest for our members.

While there are only between nine and eleven session days currently scheduled and no bills or proposals to react to, we are monitoring this issue very closely and working to ensure that should any proposal surface, municipal concerns and fiscal stresses will be at the forefront of the debate.

In terms of background on this issue: for over a year now, the Michigan Municipal League has been advocating for the need to reform the state’s municipal finance system. The League Board of Trustees approved a platform of municipal finance reform centered around cost, structure, and revenue.

The single biggest cost reform identified by our members is the need to restructure our retiree health care obligation, commonly known as OPEB – “Other Post-Employment Benefit”. The data (view pie chart and go here) supports what our members have repeatedly told us: the escalating costs of providing retiree health care benefits, not pensions, are the biggest impediment and greatest threat to investing in their communities.