Ohio Municipal League
175 South Third Street
Suite 510
Columbus, Ohio 43215

614-221-4349 Office
614-221-4390 Fax

email:
Legislative Inquiries
John Mahoney
General Inquiries
info@omunileague.org

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OML E- BULLETIN
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Email Bulletin 1-28-05

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

Hi, everyone. The Statehouse is still relatively still, though the House did come in to move the capital-spending bill over to the Senate this week. Behind the scenes, the administration is preparing its proposed budget and tax package for unveiling on February 10. Next week, in a very limited committee schedule, the House will hear sponsor testimony on HJR 3, which is a straight renewal of Issue 2, the state's infrastructure bond issue. In the Senate, that same proposal is SJR 1.

Also this week, HB 9, which revises the Open Record Law, was introduced and referred the House Civil and Commercial Law Committee. The bill raises several concerns for us and we will oppose the bill as introduced. While we expect to have a full analysis of the bill for you next week, one section of the bill calls for mandatory open records training for elected officials, but no training for non-elected officials. For many municipalities, especially our cities, that means those who are trained will be folks who handle 1% of public records requests and those who are not trained will continue to handle 99% of the public records requests.

On other matters, a number of cities received surveys on water and sewer rates, probably in your finance department. This is a survey we are doing through Brown & Company, as we have in the past. If you received such a survey we encourage you to fill out and return that survey quickly. Thanks.

Also, in meeting with members of the General Assembly, we are getting some interest in what local governments are doing or have done in the past to consolidate services with other jurisdictions. The interest is also about what obstacles to such consolidations for some services might be, especially if the state could remove those obstacles. If you have any experience or insight into this subject, it would be very helpful to us to hear from you. Any help you can gives us on the subject will be greatly appreciated.

We expect to have a full Bulletin next week.