Inside 208

After debating House Bill 4052 for most of the afternoon, the House ended up passing the bill on a 57-52 vote today.  Numerous amendments were offered based upon the concerns that we raised with how broadly the bill could impact local governments, but each of those amendments were defeated.  The [...]

The House Commerce and Trade Committee reported a bill this morning that could have huge implications for all municipalities.  Following last week’s initial hearing on HB 4052, the version of the bill that the committee voted on today focuses on preempting all local involvement in any issue related to the “relationship” that a private [...]

Yesterday, the House Oversight and Ethics committee passed out HB 4522 with only one legislator voting no.  A different substitute was adopted from last week requiring that at least one minority vote must be in favor of passing the subpoena resolution in an attempt to help limit abuse of the [...]

The House Commerce and Trade committee met this morning to begin taking testimony on House Bill 4052.  This bill was originally a reintroduction of a bill that the League opposed late last term (HB 5977’14) that would have prohibited local units of government from creating a “community benefits ordinance”.  As the [...]

Today the full Senate unanimously passed HB 4054 this week, a bill that makes changes to the Mobile Home Commission Act.  HB 4054 is a reintroduction from last year by Rep. Andy Schor in an effort to address a situation that occurred in his district with the Life O’Riley Mobile Home Park. [...]

A Treasury-backed, six-bill package was introduced earlier this week to make a series of revisions to the recently enacted personal property tax law.  As Treasury ramps up their efforts to implement the new PPT changes approved by the voters last year, they have discovered a number of issues that need [...]

Congress this week, passed a federal budget resolution in both Chambers for the first time in many years. The resolution, which is non-binding, sets the larger figures for areas of the budget, which appropriation members will use to start developing actual budget bills. In the framework, Congress set a 10 [...]

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) [...]

MSU Extension has been working to provide a sample ordinance to municipalities regarding Urban Agriculture as it relates to Right to Farm and GAAMPs.  There are many communities who would like to allow for some type of urban agriculture given the demands of some of their residents but are unsure [...]

Today, the House Judiciary committee took testimony for the second week on two pieces of legislation dealing with medical marihuana.  HB 4209 (Rep. Callton) provides for state and local regulations of medical marihuana provisioning centers/dispensaries.  The introduced version does not allow a local municipality to ban dispensaries within their community [...]