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Ohio Municipal League
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No. 16                                                                                                   December 13, 2004

PLEASE CIRCULATE THIS BULLETIN TO YOUR COUNCIL,  DEPARTMENT HEADS & STAFF

Session Ends for Some(Sorta); Not for Others.

Racing to the end of each session of the General Assembly is always a bit chaotic, but usually the end does come down to one final bang of the gavel. This year? Uh, not so much. 

In a tactical move to force faster consideration by the House on a long-pending tort reform bill, Senator Doug White, President of the Senate, announced Thursday afternoon that the Senate would adjourn “sine die” at the end of the day. The legislative schedule had been for both Houses of the General Assembly to be in session again this week. With the sine die motion the Senate is formally done with the 125th Session and cannot return for any business until the 126th General Assembly is called to order in January. The House will be in regular session again this week.

However, an hour or so after Senator White’s announcement of sine die, the Governor announced that he will call both the House and the Senate back into session for a Special Session to consider a campaign finance bill. So, we now have the House in for regular and special session and the Senate in this week for the Special Session. Under provisions of the Governor’s declaration of a Special Session, only a bill on campaign finance can be considered by either House during the Special Session, unless the Governor makes another subject eligible for the Special Session through another declaration.

House activity for the regular session will be limited for lack of a Senate.  No House committees are scheduled this week for the regular session and actions on the floor will be limited to legislation that does not need any formal action by the Senate, such as House concurrence in Senate amendments to a House bill.

The Special Session formally begins today (Monday) and may, according to the Governor’s declaration, run until December 31, though both the House’s regular session and the Special Session are expected to end this week.

Consideration of the campaign finance bill will be managed in the House by the House State Government Committee. In the Senate, the bill will be considered by the Senate Rules Committee. Whatever the final changes made to campaign finance laws, those changes are not expected to include any changes related municipal or other local campaign finance law. However, we will be monitoring consideration of the bill.

Mayors’/Municipal Courts; EZ Amendment; Repeal of the Ohio Estate Tax.

In the final days of session, a number of amendments of municipal interest floating about were not successful.

HB 260 was stripped of an amendment that would have had mayors’ courts in the jurisdiction of a municipal court impose new court fees and send those new fees to the municipal court for computerization and special projects. Such new fees were to be imposed only if the municipal court had imposed such fees on itself prior to the establishment of the mayors’ courts in the jurisdiction. HB 260 was passed out of the Senate without that provision.

An amendment, sought by the County Commissioners’ Association of Ohio, would have changed the law governing the establishment of enterprise zones for municipalities outside of Ohio’s metropolitan areas. Under the change, those communities would have had to seek the approval of their county commissioners to establish such zones. The League opposes this change. 

CCAO got caught short on this amendment when it was announced that the expected bill on state capital improvements would not be introduced this year. CCAO had hoped to place that amendment in that “capital” bill. No bill, no amendment. We will argue this one out again next year when a capital bill is expected to be introduced.

Also, serious consideration was being given to attaching an amendment to a bill during the last day of session to eliminate Ohio’s estate tax. Such an amendment would have reduced revenues to municipalities and townships by $32 million and to the state by $8 million annually. The League, in concert with the Ohio Township Association, opposed this amendment. The amendment was not adopted.

Though successful last week, we fully expect the elimination of the estate tax to be a very important issue next year, either as part of tax reform efforts that will occur in the state budget bill or as a separate issue.

Finally, two municipalities inserted in HB 362, two special amendments, specific to those two cities and their municipal income taxes. In these days in which the state has declared that “uniformity” in municipal income taxes is a state concern, the General Assembly will find itself making these changes decreasing such uniformity, instead of having such minor variations made at the local level. The changes made should only effect the cities which asked for the changes, which sounds like a local matter to us. Unfortunately, such local matters have now become statewide concerns because of previous efforts at state tax reform.

Last Bulletin.

Given the expected end of legislative activity this week, this will most likely be our last Legislative Bulletin of 2004.