Inside 208

Last night the Senate voted out a road funding plan that could ultimately raise $1.5 billion for roads, with two of the main pieces of legislation in the plan coming to a tie on the chamber floor. The plan generates roughly $822 million by increasing the gas tax 15 cents [...]

Late yesterday afternoon the Senate Republican’s released their road funding plan and immediately voted it out of committee on a party line vote. The plan consists of a mix of new revenue and rededicating General Fund money for a total of approximately $1.5 billion in funding for roads and bridges [...]

This week, Rep Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, introduced a new E-Fairness bill, which would bring online sales tax parity to retail transactions and help states generate significant sales tax revenues which are currently going uncollected without federal action. The bill is called the Remote Transactions Parity Act (H.R. 2775) and has bipartisan [...]

The new transportation authorization bill, – Developing a Reliable and Innovative Vision for the Economy (DRIVE) – passed the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee this week. It authorizes (but does not fund) $275 billion over the next six years. The current authorization, MAP-21 expires at the end of July. [...]

The Senate Appropriations Committee voted this week on the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development budget and there are some steep cuts to important programs to local officials. The most significant is the HOME program, which provides state and local funding for low income housing, from $900 million to just $66 [...]

The governor recently signed budget that included an additional $400 million in General Fund spending for roads and bridges. Of the $400 million $160 million will be used to match all available federal funds and the remaining $240 million will be distributed to MDOT, County Road Commissions, and Cities and [...]

On May 29, 2015, the Authority Council of the new Local Community Stabilization Authority (LCSA) met and approved the distribution of the 2015 annual payments to cities, villages, and townships under the Metropolitan Extension Telecommunications Rights-of-Way Oversight Act (METRO Act), 2002 PA 48. The following link lists the amounts payable [...]

Michigan has 11,000 inland lakes and over 1,850 units of government who share a role in keeping those lakes clean for future generations. Four workshops will be held in Michigan during the summer of 2015 to help local officials and concerned citizens understand the benefits of inland lakes to communities, [...]

The grand-daddy of local preemption bills, House Bill 4052, was bounced back and forth between the House and Senate last week as the Governor’s office weighed in on the arguments that the League and other local government organizations were raising about the broad, negative impacts the bill would have state-wide.  [...]

Treasury’s Office of Revenue and Tax Analysis recently provided the following guidance for municipalities claiming reimbursement for their small taxpayer exemption loss.  This guidance follows in line with the expected final passage of House Bills 4553-4558.  Please let us know if you have any questions. PPT2015DebtRateCalculationNoticeNonSchools061115 (2) Chris Hackbarth is [...]