Today, the House Oversight and Ethics committee for the second week took up HB 4522, a bill that would grant any legislative committee subpoena power over local units of government and schools.  A substitute was adopted that narrowed this to only the committees who receive and review the auditor general reports (oversight committee) in each of the house and senate and would require a resolution passed by 2/3 of the committee.

The ability to subpoena local records is already allowed under Act 118 of 1931 by a resolution of the full house/senate.  This legislation would give authority to the committee that recieve and review auditor general reports (the Oversight committee in this case) to subpoena witnesses by a 2/3 vote of the committee members and not the full house/senate.

The League is opposed to this legislation.

Nikki Brown is a legislative associate for the League handling economic development, land use and municipal services issues.  She can be reached at nbrown@mml.org or 517-908-0305.