Legislature(1993 - 1994)
03/29/1994 01:00 PM House CRA
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* first hearing in first committee of referral
+ teleconferenced
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+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
HB 502 - MANDATED MUNICIPAL SERVICES Number 486 REPRESENTATIVE MARK HANLEY, PRIME SPONSOR OF HB 502, testified saying, "Basically, what the bill does is says, `after the effective date of this act, anything that we pass on to local governments we should fund.' It's a good policy, I think, because just like the federal government keeps mandating things to us and doesn't pass on the funding, the state has a similar policy of doing it to local communities and it's easy for us to pass these things on. There are practical problems with how you actually implement it and I think it's good to get this discussion going. As a general policy, it makes a lot of sense and we've talked to the municipalities; they're supportive, I believe, of this thing because they continually see us, whether it's the senior citizen's property tax exemption, which we originally funded at 100 percent...and of course, in this year's budget, we're not funding any of it, but they still have to provide it...and there's lots of other examples. I think that municipalities just want to know that if we're going to mandate something, we're going to pay for it..." Number 508 REPRESENTATIVE DAVIES said, "Having been a former municipal assembly member, I appreciate the intent of this, but Representative Hanley indicated that there were some problems...and one of them that occurs to me is that perhaps to be able to distinguish between mandates and fundamental requirements of local government..." REPRESENTATIVE HANLEY said, "The whole intent of this was to try and get some debate going and answer some of these questions...I think some of the municipal people will be able to address some of that... I would also note with a statute as this is, it's really appropriation power that's constitutionally mandated to the legislature so it's a little bit tough on the enforcement side, even with a statute in here if we choose not to appropriate something, it may not get appropriated and there may not be recourse against the state." REPRESENTATIVE BUNDE asked the sponsor "to share your perspective of the problems that you see." REPRESENTATIVE HANLEY said, "Initially, folks had approached me to do a constitutional amendment for this and I was concerned...if we work through some of the language in the statute, it's not in the Constitution. We're not going to get required to pay for police protection...people are providing those services. So with the statute, there is more flexibility. That is the problem, trying to define or think of circumstances in the future where we might choose to mandate something that we don't want to fund... It would be any new laws enacted after this point.." REPRESENTATIVE ED WILLIS asked, "This just applies to anything in the future?" REPRESENTATIVE HANLEY replied, "It is intended to start from this point and go forward with new laws rather than try and address the incredible number of things that local communities (do)... It was an attempt to say `from this point forward, we will debate these issues one by one and say if we're going to require something then we should fund it.'" REPRESENTATIVE WILLIS said, "The Senior Citizen Property Tax Exemption: If, for example, suppose the legislature after the enactment of this particular law decided to lower the caps to reduce the funding to this program, would the fact that we changed the caps then put that amended legislation under the umbrella of this particular bill"? REPRESENTATIVE HANLEY said, "It says, `A law enacted that requires a municipality to perform a new activity or service' and I would think that would be covered, `or increase the level of any activity or service.' So, if you were lowering the cap, that would I think, be a reduction of the responsibility..." Number 596 REPRESENTATIVE BUNDE pointed out, "Should we suddenly establish a new city, then how (would) the traditional services (yet to be provided) fall under this bill"? REPRESENTATIVE HANLEY replied, "If somebody chooses to incorporate then they come under the current mandates that are already in the statutes so they would also be required to fulfill whatever level of service, just like these cities that are already providing that, that would be the current law. It's not based on a new city coming into effect, it's based on the legislature passing a new law to add something else to any community... It's not going to exempt things that have already happened...it's a problem. It seemed easier to force the debate into the future, one by one, as we passed new laws..." CHAIRMAN OLBERG said, "I don't know how it could be any clearer that we're not going to change anything that's happened historically. We're going to act differently after the effective date of this legislation as far as the state's relationship with municipalities." DANIEL MOORE, CAPITAL BUDGET OFFICER, MUNICIPALITY OF ANCHORAGE, testified via teleconference in support of HB 502. He said, "The municipality, of course, has been experiencing quite a few mandates, mostly from the federal level in the past. There are state mandates...that have negatively impacted the municipality. Our primary concern is...the potential escalation of unfunded state mandates in the future which would probably be caused as a result of the state trying to deal with declining revenues... State mandates as defined within the language of HB 502 constitutes any law to provide a new activity or service. We believe that mandates aren't necessarily bad, however, when they go unfunded or when there's no agreement to participate in the funding. We believe the municipality is forced to give artificially high priority to these mandates. As a result of having unfunded mandates, there's an artificial high priority, takes priority over basic services. A municipality must still pay for these out of increased taxes or, if the funds are not available, services are then cut. The municipality believes that as the state struggles to balance its budget now...the practice of burdening local governments with unfunded mandates will increase. The legislature therefore needs to pass legislation similar to HB 502 in a timely manner so that future legislatures will be discouraged from unfairly burdening local government. Attached with our testimony is a list of actual unfunded mandates that have occurred in the past..." (A copy of this list may be found in the House Community and Regional Affairs Committee Room, Capitol Room 126, and after the adjournment of the second session of the 18th Alaska State Legislature, in the Legislative Reference Library.) MR. MOORE continued, "HB 502 is designed to have an effective date for future mandates. At this time the municipality would just like to encourage legislatures to still work on addressing past unfunded mandates, especially the senior citizen's property tax exemption. Our position is either to provide full funding for it or to at least give the municipalities the option of opting out of the program... This particular example of an unfunded state mandate is the municipalities greatest example of the degree to which the state has forced local government to provide funding for mandate... On a final note...there's about four points that the municipalities' Department of Law has brought up... One is being the way we define the word `law' in the bill... Another, deals with who with the state would actually administer this type of law. And in addition, there's other issues in terms of how it gets funded from year to year..." Number 709 REPRESENTATIVE DAVIES said, "I'm still trying to understand if we can differentiate between what might be called fundamental requirements of local government versus mandated additional requirements that the state government might put on top of that." TAPE 94-15, SIDE B Number 000 REPRESENTATIVE DAVIES referred to the list provided by the Municipality of Anchorage. (A copy of this list may be found in the House Community and Regional Affairs Committee Room, Capitol Room 126, and after the adjournment of the second session of the 18th Alaska State Legislature, in the Legislative Reference Library.) He pointed out, "Equipment and staff time to monitor chlorine levels in pools: This would be public swimming pools and spas... They don't require that you operate pools, but they require that if you operate a pool that you do it in a safe manner. Can you comment on that kind of a distinction? That's kind of a second order mandate, in my view." SCOTT BRAND-ERICKSON, ATTORNEY, MUNICIPALITY OF ANCHORAGE, testified via teleconference, "Your questions can be answered in a similar fashion. Other states have by constitutional provision or statute, set out limitations on mandates. Two examples, Massachusetts and California have extended programs in the past classifying whether a particular service is a fundamentally local government requirement or a new mandate or with the pool example...and the suggestion that we would have is, we don't actually know a quick way to answer all of these questions because they tend to depend upon the facts and the particular service. Something that California did that we think would be helpful would be, if there is either by in the statute or by regulation work by one of the administrative departments that can set up the rules for deciding what is a new service, what is an increase in level of service and to differentiate what is something that the local government is deciding to do itself." REPRESENTATIVE DAVIES asked if Mr. Brand-Erickson had the language from California and for the committee to receive it. MR. BRAND-ERICKSON said he would retrieve it for the committee. REPRESENTATIVE BUNDE asked, "In line 6 of the bill...how would that affect cost sharing? Would you read this to say the state would, should pay a hundred percent or fifty percent"? CHAIRMAN OLBERG said, "If the statute says `we'll give you half the money to do this if you want to' and you choose to do it, it's no longer a mandate perhaps." Number 112 KENT SWISHER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ALASKA MUNICIPAL LEAGUE, testified in support of HB 502. He said, "We continue to be very concerned with this one and appreciative of the legislation. Having been party to this kind of debate in other states and at the national level...I guess I would say that we would regard HB 502 probably as more of a statement of legislative policy than a barrier of future enactments... I think the fact that one would have to go to court to implement the provisions of HB 502, would tend to militate against local jurisdictions using it in a frivolous way because it's not a free procedure... One thing you might want to do as a part of strengthening the process, is strengthen the fiscal note process that you have currently in place. Right now that process doesn't kick in until we're awfully late in the game..." REPRESENTATIVE DAVIES said, "I take it what you're suggesting here is that somehow the fiscal note process would explicitly be required to take note of fiscal impacts on the municipalities." MR. SWISHER confirmed this. CHAIRMAN OLBERG suggested a process in which municipalities could submit fiscal notes. REPRESENTATIVE DAVIES said, "I wonder if Mr. Swisher might comment on what I call the second order mandate. The situation where the state might require a municipality when they engage in some optional activity, like operating a swimming pool, that they operate it safely... Those things certainly mandate some costs on your part...but that's something you decide when you choose to operate the pool. Could a distinction like that be made that would eliminate that class of thing from this bill"? MR. SWISHER said, "That would take some work with the language. I think probably it could be. At least in my mind there exists a fairly clear distinction between such things as the capital matching grant program which might require a mandate, a match from us only if we choose to participate in it. So we don't consider it a mandate. Then there are a series of things that get further and further away from clarity... I think that the impracticality of pursuing compensation for a relatively minor mandate and one that normal people might think is probably part of what we ought to do anyway would be difficult, expensive and unsuccessful." Number 244 REPRESENTATIVE DAVIES said, "I can offer perhaps a more expensive second order mandate: The operation of a municipal landfill. The state regulations on that can be fairly expensive and yet they can be equally important to public health." MR. SWISHER concurred and said, "In some part in that we are into what I would call a pass through mandate because often we're dealing with mandates from the federal government which the state is mandatorily implementing. I would think that we could find some language that...would do that, the kind of things you're thinking about..." CHAIRMAN OLBERG reminded the committee, "I think the key element is that we don't have to address anything we're already doing, but we would certainly have to craft statutes more carefully in the future to take all of these things into consideration and there would have to be some way to address federal mandates..." Number 280 REPRESENTATIVE DAVIES asked, "That's the question: ...Under this bill, would we be required to pick up the cost of federal mandates that are supposed to be passed through to municipalities." CHAIRMAN OLBERG said, "Under the wording of this bill, probably, I'd say, yes..." REPRESENTATIVE DAVIES said, "It seems to me that we might be able to address this issue by trying to define what I would call... a fundamental mandate, or clear mandate and what I would call a second order mandate... Perhaps we could define two categories of mandate and the law could require that we place any new law in one of those two categories and that would force the debate on whether this was an unfunded mandate...or some other category..." Number 320 CHAIRMAN OLBERG offered to reschedule HB 502 for "next week" so the committee could "reflect" on the bill. ADJOURNMENT CHAIRMAN OLBERG adjourned the meeting at 2:12 p.m.
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