Inside 208

The Department of Treasury has released a personal property tax reimbursement spreadsheet to help members calculate their reimbursement amounts under the legislation the Governor signed in March. You can view the spreadsheet and determine your community’s reimbursement amount here: ppt reimbursement worksheet Samantha Harkins is the Director of State Affairs [...]

The first piece of the personal property tax reimbursement package is upon us. It involves reimbursement of TIF plans for small parcel exemption losses. There are two forms created by Treasury: Form 5176 –Non-Brownfield Authorities and Form 5176BR –Brownfield Authorities . These forms are also available on Treasury’s website: Local Government Officials [...]

US Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx has sent a letter to all State Department of Transportation Directors letting them know that because of the funding shortfall in the Highway Trust Fund, reduced payments to states will begin starting August 1st absent Congressional action in order to manage cash flow. The letter is [...]

MobiPrize, an award program through SMART (Sustainable Mobility & Accessibility Research and Transformation) at the University of Michigan, has added a City/State category to their sustainable transportation awards this year. The deadline for the applications is July 7th. The award is for cities that have demonstrated active efforts to build a [...]

Congress is unfortunately not any closer to solving the federal transportation crisis. The Highway Trust Fund is expected to run out of funding within weeks, yet Congress can’t agree on either a long term solution or short term fix. Recently, Senators Bob Corker (R-Tenn) and Patrick Murphy (D-Conn) proposed legislation [...]

The Senate passed the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, H.R. 803 by a margin of 95-3, sending the bill back to the House for action as soon as the next week. WIOA reauthorizes the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 by retaining many positive aspects of the program, while updating and streamlining others [...]

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has announced they are extending the deadline for comments regarding their proposed “Waters of the U.S.” rule until October 20th. The proposed rule would change the definition of “Waters of the U.S.” in the Clean Water Act, which determines jurisdiction of water bodies under the [...]

More than a dozen Michigan cities and villages have approved resolutions urging residents to vote YES on Proposal 1 Aug. 5. The Michigan Municipal League is part of the vote YES on Proposal 1 Michigan Citizens for Strong and Safe Communities coalition and is encouraging our member communities to adopt [...]

The Michigan Legislature is out of session until July 16 at the earliest.  They are in district campaigning so it is a perfect time for you to set up meetings with them in your own communities. Nikki Brown is a legislative associate for the League handling economic development and land [...]

Although the legislature was unable to come up with a comprehensive solution to fix Michigan’s transportation system, next years transportation budget includes an additional $144.5 million in one-time funding for roads. As a result cities and villages across this state will receive $31.5 million. Based on the boilerplate language in [...]