Inside 208

While last week’s House and Senate adjournment merely marks the mid-point of this two-year legislative session, that did not mean that the Legislature coasted into their holiday break. Highlighted by the intense activity surrounding OPEB reform, both legislative chambers pursued aggressive agendas in the final days before adjourning.  Numerous bills [...]

Attached is the official Notice of Funds Availability (NOFA) announcement for the open application period for two Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) mitigation grant programs for FY 2017.  This funding announcement includes the Flood Mitigation Assistance (FMA) Program and the Pre-Disaster Mitigation (PDM) Program.  Both of these FEMA hazard mitigation [...]

The Michigan Chapter of the American Public Works Association (APWA) will be hosting its annual Great Lakes Expo beginning Tuesday, May 23rd, with educational sessions continuing on May 24th and 25th. The Expo will offer three session tracts for those in Public Works: Management, Operations and Fleet Maintenance. This year’s [...]

This week SB 157 was voted out of Michigan Competitiveness Committee on 4-1 party-line vote.The bill states a public entity could not exclude any pipe and piping materials when soliciting bids for a public works project if the pipe and piping materials meets or exceeds the recognized standards for pipe [...]

The Governor has proposed Lead and Copper Rule reforms saying “The federal rule is dumb and dangerous. We need a Michigan rule that is smart and safe.” The proposed changes will require both administrative rule changes and statutory changes by the legislature. Proposed Administrative Rule Changes: Phase in a reduction [...]

(View more photos here) About 60 local municipal officials from throughout the state were at the state Capitol Thursday in Lansing for the Michigan Municipal League’s Legislative Committee Kick-Off Orientation. The first-time event for the League was highly successful as members from the League’s various legislative policy committees heard from [...]

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Michigan Municipal League CEO and Executive Director Dan Gilmartin will participate in a Congressional Capitol Briefing Wednesday in Washington D.C. and talk about national infrastructure issues and the Flint water crisis. Gilmartin will be part of a panel that will inform members of Congress about the most [...]

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, [...]

Michigan’s environmental cleanup laws allow for the use of institutional controls when environmental contamination is proposed to be left in-place at a property. Often times, this contamination has migrated onto property controlled or operated by local units of government, tribal government or other authority, such as, road right-of-ways. Institutional controls [...]

The Environmental Protection Agency is having an open comment period until December 22nd, to allow individuals and organizations to respond to proposed new regulation of discharge of dental amalgam into publicly owned treatment works (POTWs) as part of the Clean Water Act. The regulation would classify dentists as an “industrial [...]