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FAX BULLETIN 6/18/99 PLEASE CIRCULATE THIS BULLETIN TO YOUR COUNCIL, DEPARTMENT HEADS & STAFF Conference Committees Begin Meetings on Budgets. Joint Conference Committees of the House and Senate began meeting on both HB 282, the state's biennial education budget, and HB 283, the state's proposed operating budget, this week. Serving on the Conference Committee for the state operating budget are: Reps. E.J. Thomas, chair, John Carey and Peter Lawson Jones and Sens. Roy Ray, Doug White and Eric Fingerhut. Though the committee working on the operating budget marked as "reserved" for discussion the Senate provision that would restrict the ways in which a municipality can pay to manage the community's rights-of-ways, it is not yet clear whether this provision will be part of the final budget sent to Governor Taft. It is critical that you continue to let your local legislators know how important and inappropriate this non-budgetary amendment is to your municipality. There are simply too many unanswered questions in this amendment to let it pass in any fashion other than stand-alone legislation. For instance, while the restrictions of the amendment apply to political subdivisions in all sections of the amendment, the state, with its enormous right-of-way assets, is only included in the restrictions in one section of the amendment. Without a separate bill and hearings in both Houses, we will never know why the state is excluded from certain sections of this proposal. Thanks for all the contact with your members of the General Assembly on this matter. Please, continue to voice your concerns on this issue until we see some sort of resolution. The proposal to reduce the state's inventory tax by one per cent a year for twenty-five years seems to be receiving support from both Houses so far. If you have concerns about this particular proposal, now is the time to talk to your local legislators on this issue. House Passes Electric DeReg Bill; No Conference Expected. The Ohio House this week passed by a large margin a compromised and recompromised version of electric deregulation. The House's first version of the bill (SB 3) out of the House Public Utilities Committee's raised concerns in the Senate that may have caused a conference committee between the two Houses. That committee version was then reworked and amended on the floor of the House to meet some of those Senate objections. Early indications are that the reworked version passed by the entire House would meet enough of the Senate's objections for the Senate to concur on the bill. The final decision on concurrence will be made by the Senate during this coming week at the Senate's Tuesday Session. Included in the bill is a process by which municipalities can market electricity in their communities through either an "opt-out" or "opt-in" program. The opt-out program would automatically include municipal residents and businesses in whatever deal the city or village establishes. Residents and businesses would have to opt-out to buy their electricity elsewhere. This option in the bill, however, can only be created through a popular vote. The opt-in program is a voluntarily sign up program. This option, one already used by some municipalities in natural gas, requires only councilmanic action. |
