NWOTCA
Meeting Date:
Call to Order
The meeting
was called to order at
Updates on legislation/OML
At last Friday’s OML meeting Kent Scarrett quickly ran through many bits of legislation affecting cities. The legislation reflects a trend to weaken or eliminate local government authority and funding. Bits and pieces of law are contained in many bills including budget bills of both houses of congress, as well as the collective bargaining bill. This makes tracking the issues and evaluating the impact particularly difficult. There is also much debate on the actual meaning of the wording of sections of law to determine what constitutes compliance.
Issues in the works include reducing the Local Government Funds over the next couple years; repealing the estate tax; mandating changes of employer/employee funding of employees’ PERS plans; mandating how health care premiums are paid by employers/employees; making it easier for townships (and maybe counties) to merge with cities and abilities to share expenses; adding another level of state oversight over municipalities’ fiscal health; and providing local tax exemptions for companies working in cities while under a state contract.
Each of these issues has complexities and ambiguities of their own with the uncertain impact to communities if implemented. For instance, the proposed reduction of the Local Government funds and other smaller funds is to take place over a couple of years, however, municipalities can have different fiscal years from the state budget year. Applying the reduction schedule for differing fiscal years is not specified.
The repealing of the estate tax has two different effective dates depending on whether the House bill or Senate bill is passed. There will be hearings and likely reconciliation committee meetings to determine the final bill.
Pension issues are found in several bills. The House and Senate are not in agreement over the 2% employer/2% employee sharing of pension contributions. Currently, different local government departments can have different sharing ratios depending on what was negotiated. The same issues come into play with the health care premium issue. While mandated health care premium sharing is contained in the collective bargaining bill, it is not known whether municipalities without union employees will be forced to comply as well. It is also not known what happens when the employer offers employees a choice of plans (HMO or high deductible) with very differing premiums.
While one section makes it easier for townships to merge with cities and to share expenses, another section makes it more difficult for cities to have a special election to offset revenue reductions and expenses. Still another area adds another level to the state’s oversight of the fiscal health of municipalities. The “watch” level has been added to “warning, emergency, and dissolve” levels already in place.
Current impact of the proposed cost of living allowance change in the pension plans has many employees retiring or preparing to retire to prevent their pension being impacted by the proposed new law. Cities are already struggling with this shift in personnel and having to deal with the uncertainty of how to restructure until they know the extent of personnel reductions they will end up with. If this is enacted too quickly, many employees waiting in the wings may be unable to avoid the impact.
Centralized tax collection of municipal revenue is not a part of the budget bill yet. Bills being watched for issues include:
HB 69 and SB 3 for pension plans;
HB 50 and HB 20 for annexation and water issues;
SB 125 for shared services;
HB 194 and SB 148 for special elections;
SB 145 for larger communities required to share revenues with the smaller neighboring cities since the larger communities are able to obtain state grants.
The tax commissioner group
The OML Tax
Seminar this year will be held in
Staff Seminar 2011
This year’s staff seminar will be a combined NWOTCA meeting and staff seminar. There will be a NWOTCA meeting prior to the start of the seminar sessions. The commissioner meeting is to discuss the 12-day rule chart and forms chart to decide final formats and information to include on these for posting on the NWOTCA website.
The location is to again be the WW
Knight Preserve in
Subjects
for the sessions were discussed.
Customer service was again suggested as well as the possibility of
hiring a speaker to present the session.
Complexities with W-2s was another suggestion but probably could be
coupled with other shorter subjects.
There was still interest in Form 2106 complications and as the
discussion progressed it was suggested that the various ways cities address
this tax issue could be discussed with an aim at finding some uniformity among
the group. Sandy of
Additional issues include domicile, ministers and housing allowance, and electronics and shortcuts in the office. Some issues could be combined and covered by those on a panel. Any other suggestions or offers to present should be brought to Angie as soon as possible to set up the agenda.
New Business
While Pat
of
In the information exchange, Jenny
of