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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March 15, 2006

To: All Municipal Officials

From: Mayor Tom George, OML President and Susan J. Cave, OML Executive Director

Enclosed is a bullet-point analysis of the flaws in the Tax Expenditure Limitation (TEL) proposal, initiated by Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, that led the Board of Trustees of the League to oppose this Constitutional Amendment. The Amendment is scheduled to appear on the November, 2006 statewide ballot. The enclosed analysis is just the first of many information pieces we will produce in the coming months.

We hope this analysis will be helpful to you as you discuss this with your constituents. Because the concept of the TEL and its promises of less state spending and lower state taxes are attractive concepts, it is important that we begin to clarify what this amendment actually does right now. While this amendment may or may not change budget behavior at the state level, the amendment will certainly wreck municipal budgeting across the state in devastating ways. While there may be a way to design a TEL that helps the state govern itself, this TEL is so poorly designed that it will cripple the ability of municipal and other local governments to provide the everyday, essential services upon which our citizens depend.

We urge you share this information with the citizens of your community in as many ways as you think are appropriate. Just as with the Local Government Funds fight and the campaign for State Issue 1 last fall, your grassroots efforts are critical to the success of defeating this particular TEL.

Legislative Bulletin

This mailing and e-mail will serve as our Legislative Bulletin for this week. A substantially amended version of sub. HB 9, the Open Records Bill, was voted out of the House Civil and Commercial Law Committee and out of the House. Many of the amendments adopted were favorable to the League’s view. HB 56, the Red Light Camera Bill, was not voted out of the Senate Highways and Transportation Committee and, we believe, there will be time to do more to improve that bill.

That being the case, we do not expect a great deal on the committee calendar for next week that will be of interest to municipalities. Should the unexpected occur, we will send out an e-Bulletin on Friday. In any case, we will post the schedule of any bills of interest to municipalities on our website (www.omunileague.org) by Friday afternoon.