With the clock running out on formal House and Senate sessions, Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito on Tuesday called on the Senate to follow the House’s lead and take up the administration’s municipal modernization bill.
“The municipal modernization bill has a tremendous amount of support in the Legislature, you could see the unanimous vote in the House,” Polito told the News Service on Tuesday. “I’m hopeful that the Senate will make it a priority before recessing at the end of the year because it is an integral part of helping communities succeed and we can’t do it with just dollars of investment alone.”
The bundle of reforms (H 4397), which cleared the House with unanimous support last week, repeals a law requiring the state to review the accounts of county treasurers, increases the amount that cities may appropriate to reserve funds from 3 percent to 5 percent of the tax levy of the preceding fiscal year, and increases from 20 percent to 35 percent the statutory limit on the amount of a residential exemption that can be granted, among many other provisions.
“It’s all about giving local communities more flexibility, modernizing and updating the way that they do business at the local level, and then eliminating obsolete laws that have no useful benefit,” Polito, who has served as the administration’s liaison to municipalities, said of the bill.
(State House News Service photo) 
