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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMLCT - Recovery and Reinvestment Actder-fe, ,L???G Ak. LCT? Recovery and Reinvestment Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in March. At that time, the President believed that a high powered and monstrously expensive jolt was necessary to stimulate the national economy. The federal government will pour $880 million into Montana through the stimulus package and the biggest challenge during the closing days of the 2009 Legislature was to assure that a fair share of this money would get all the way down to the cities, towns and counties across Montana where it will work effectively to create jobs and build the foundation for future prosperity. The House and Senate worked effectively together to implement the Recovery Act in Montana. The bill that was passed in the final hours will stabilize threatened programs, provide help to those most vulnerable in difficult times, bolster schools and state agencies and allocate unprecedented levels of funding for capital projects across our state. Cities will receive nearly $10-million in direct grants for street, water, sewer, building and other facility improvements. An additional 33 municipal projects will be funded with an infusion of federal money into the Treasure State Endowment, the water and sewer revolving loan program will be bolstered and cities and towns will be eligible for special financing to promote energy efficiency. As usual, the results of the biennial slugfest were a strange concoction of winners and losers, missed chances and unexpected opportunities that may never come this way again. The Winners House Bill 645 --- is the stimulus implementation bill that was passed on the 90th day of the Legislature. It has been sent to the Governor. This measure will spread nearly $10-million to cities and towns to cover a specific list of capital projects that were identified in a survey conducted by the League last month. The Department of Commerce will administer the infrastructure program. It will develop and post guidelines, provide on-line forms and other information necessary to get this money out to local governments and into the pockets of those Montanans who will go to work under the Recovery Act. Reporting requirements may be cumbersome, but $10-million is a lot of money for a little "paperwork". The bill allows modifications to the projects on the initial list, and requires local governments to spend stimulus funds by the end of next September. It also added more than $20 million to the water and sewer revolving loan program and pumped up funding for historic preservation and energy conservation. This bill and other measures to which it is connected, authorize the largest expenditure on local government capital projects in the history of this state. House Bill 11--- is the appropriation measure for the Treasure State Endowment Program. As introduced in January, the bill would have funded 33 local government infrastructure projects at a cost of $17.8 million over the two-year funding cycle. The Recovery Act allowed the Legislature to "double down". The final version of the bill will fund all 66 projects that were submitted with an additional appropriation of $23-million. The Legislature has now funded the entire TSEP project list in the last two sessions. Total grant allocation to cities, towns, counties and water and sewer districts over the four year period will be more than $75-million. House Bill 658 --- was the only survivor of a troop of measures to mitigate the results of the latest reappraisal of various classes of property across the state. The periodic analysis determined that the value of residential property had increased 55% since the end of 2001. There were smaller but still significant increases in the value of commercial and agricultural property and timberland. This bill will phase in new property values over six years. It will also adjust tax rates and exemptions, which will "flat line" valuation increases on average across the state. This approach is similar to current law. The bill includes a provision that will allow municipal and county levies to increase slightly to capture the full value of new construction. House Bill 420 --- allows local governments to adopt voluntary energy conservation codes. It is one of several measures intended to promote the use of energy efficient building practices. Senate Bill 8 --- authorizes the creation of regional water authorities. The bill was promoted by cities, towns, counties, water and irrigation districts and other interests along the Hi-line to begin the rehabilitation of the historic St. Mary's Project. The League worked with supporters and legislative staff to offer amendments that led to near unanimous support for the measure in the House and Senate. Senate Bill 9 --- will allow local governments to use revenue bonds to finance transportation facilities and equipment including buses, trolleys and light rail systems. Senate Bill 57 --- was the product of an interim study of special district statutes. Most of the provisions of the bill apply to counties, but it will allow cities to create park maintenance districts without referring the question to the voters. Senate Bill 58 --- includes a sequence of generally inconsequential revisions of local government laws, but it does allow for the issuance of small denomination bonds, $1-million or less, through local banks. Senate Bill 95 --- allows the Department of Environmental Quality to set temporary nutrient criteria for wastewater discharge permits. This measure will be vital in the collaborative work between cities and the department to develop nutrient standards that are fair, affordable and scientifically feasible. Montana cities and towns are committed to protecting the quality of the state's water resources under a fair and balanced regulatory regime. This bill is an important step in that direction. Senate Bill 294 --- allows cities to issue revenue bonds backed by street maintenance assessments or arterial fees to finance improvements. The act will speed up the timeline on street projects and protect cities from the recent sharp increases in material and construction costs. Senate Bill 390 --- authorizes cities and towns to pledge street maintenance fees as security for loans from the state. The Losers Senate Bill 506 --- would have authorized local referenda on the question of enacting a 4% tax on goods and services directly linked to the tourist economy. This bill was at the top of the municipal priority index for the 2009 Legislature and it had many arguable advantages including uniformity, revenue sharing, property tax relief, business assistance, ease of administration and the basic fairness of the idea that tourists should pay a fair share of the cost of the services they use while they are in Montana. The bill was killed by a margin of more than 2-1 on the floor of the Senate. There is no easy, understandable or comforting explanation of this vote other than the wimpy excuse that "this was not the year to talk about new taxes". House Bill 228 --- is the Citizen's Self Defense and Firearms Right Act. The bill was opposed by most law enforcement agencies, and they worked 90 days to excise or amend some of the most threatening provisions including a section that would have allowed almost anyone to carry a gun inside the limits of a city without a permit. The final bill was better than the introduced version but it seems to be a step away from the idea of domestic tranquility. House Bill 472 --- would have prevented the Department of Transportation from requiring cities to assume responsibility for the maintenance of sidewalks as a condition of construction projects on state routes within municipal boundaries. This bill passed the House but was tabled in the Senate Local Government Committee. The League and MMIA are working now to negotiate new contracts with MDOT that fairly balance state and local responsibilities for sidewalk maintenance. House Bill 531--- prohibits the use of remote devices, specifically red light cameras, to issue traffic citations. Bozeman and Billings were prepared to install cameras to promote safety and reduce enforcement costs before this bill was introduced, passed and signed into law by the Governor. This was a difficult issue that got tangled up in irrelevant discussions of the Patriot Act, Federal ID cards and George Orwell. The Rejects House Bill 276 --- would have made local governments responsible for the medical costs of persons "detained" by law enforcement. The medical costs for those detained by city police would have been the responsibility of counties in the introduced version of the bill. There was an attempt to shift this responsibility to cities before the measure was finally rejected in the House Judiciary Committee. House Bill 408 -- would have provided workers' compensation coverage to paid firefighters diagnosed with cancer, heart disease and other conditions. The bill would have increased WC premiums. It was stalled in the House Appropriations Committee and missed the deadline for the transmittal of bills. House Bills 476, 484 and 494 --- would have limited the duration, revised the definitions and complicated the management of Tax Increment Finance Districts. These bills were tabled in the House Taxation Committee. A resolution for an interim study of TIF Districts was also rejected. House Bill 665 ---would have required cities with populations above 20,000 to meet impossibly stringent wastewater discharge standards. This bill was a message in a bottle filled with gasoline - a Molotov cocktail hurled at representatives of larger cities who had supported a bill to limit development along river banks. Senate Bill 148 --- as introduced was an inconsequential mostly stylistic revision of outdated local government statutes. Then, Yellowstone County and a major oil company suggested amendments to revise municipal incorporation laws. These amendments were rejected and the original version of the bill was passed. Senate Bill 402 --- was another effort to extend property rights through the application of the "takings doctrine" in the state and federal constitutions. This version would have protected intangible property and severely diminished state and local authority to regulate activities and issue permits. The bill was rejected on a tie vote in the House Judiciary Committee. Senate Bill 486 --- would have interfered with local control and management of the proceeds of voter-approved public safety mill levies. The measure died quietly in the Senate Local Government Committee. Senate Bill 487 --- would have borrowed the "nexus concept" from the Impact Fee Law to limit the extent of waivers of the right to protest. The bill was tabled in the Senate Local Government Committee. Senate Bill 490 --- would have increased the amount of business equipment that is exempt from taxation. The bill passed the Senate by a 49-1 margin but died in the House because the reimbursement schedule attached to the measure would have cost more than $20-million annually. The Revisions House Bill 608 --- may be the last word in a long running disagreement between cities and the insurance industry over the responsibility of property owners to cover the costs of demolishing buildings destroyed by fire. The bill allows cities to secure writs of attachment against property owners to pay clean up costs. Versions of the bill rejected in the last two sessions allowed cities to file liens against casualty insurance proceeds, which drew strong opposition from the industry and its phalanx of lobbyists. Senate Bill 310 --- limits the use of waivers of the right to protest as a condition of subdivision approval. The introduced version of the bill was an outright prohibition of waivers that are used to allow developers to install improvements as the subdivision builds out. The final version of the bill requires the city or county to identify the improvements subject to the waivers and limits the duration to 20 years. Senate Bill 491--- specifies that mill levy increases for health insurance benefits that are exempt under the property tax limits in 15-10-420 cannot cover employees paid through enterprise funds. The bill also sets up a procedure to allow cities that have not previously provided group benefits to qualify for the exemption.