Hearings held for Massachusetts Governor Healey bill that would allow local-option tax hikes on hotels, meals and vehicles

In the last several months, hearings were held to urge Beacon Hill to support the Municipal Empowerment Act.

Governor Maura Healey filed the legislation to “help local governments across Massachusetts reduce long-term fiscal pressures, attract a talented workforce, provide high-quality services, and streamline operations to best serve residents.”

“Every Massachusetts resident deserves to live in a community with high-quality local services, from safe roadways to access to good jobs and schools,” said Healey. “Our administration knows that city and town officials know their communities the best, and that’s why we want to empower them with the tools to make the choices they need to provide the best local services that meet the unique needs of their communities.” 

Highlights of the bill include: 

• Expediting the removal of double poles by empowering the Department of Public Utilities and Department of Telecommunications and Cable to establish a process allowing speedier removal while giving municipalities enforcement authority with penalties for utilities that fail to comply.
• Supporting the prevention of drug overdoses by ensuring that anyone who administers fentanyl strips, including local public safety officials, will not be subject to criminal or civil liability.
• Easing procurement of snow hauling services by aligning these services with procurement procedures for snow removal. 
• Expanding municipalities’ ability to reduce school bus service costs by repealing a law that limits districts’ ability to start in-house school bus services when private transportation companies are available.     
• Creating new property tax exemptions for seniors to allow cities and towns to adopt a Senior Means Tested Property Tax Exemption for qualifying seniors and to increase existing senior property tax exemptions. 
• Addressing long-term benefit funding pressures by establishing a new Other Post-Employment Benefits (OPEB) Commission to take a fresh look at opportunities to address unfunded liabilities from non-pension employee benefits. 
• Allowing the creation of Regional Boards of Assessors to allow municipalities to streamline duties and reduce significant staffing challenges.  
• Creating additional temporary flexibilities in post-retirement employment by expanding the process for seeking exemptions to post-retirement employment rules for the next 3 years.
• Reforming procurement law:
  • Clarifying that groups of cities and towns can award multiple contracts through an RFP process under M.G.L. Chapter 30B and purchase both supplies and services from collectively bid contracts;  
  • Equalizing 30B thresholds for advertised procurements to $100 k for all municipal purchasing – not just schools; 
  • Eliminating the requirement to publish notice of invitations for competitive bids on COMMBUYS; 
• Supporting workforce challenges by centralizing valuation of telecom and utility property through the Department of Revenue’s Division of Local Services (DLS) to relieve cities and towns of the cost of individually hiring experts and consultants.  
• Updating borrowing rules for school projects to increase from 30 years to 40 years the bond term to more closely reflects the life expectancy of the project.  
• Empowering communities to generate more local revenue. As the primary lever available to cities and towns to raise revenues for local services, increasing pressure is being put on local property taxes. This bill expands options for cities and towns to raise revenue without raising property taxes:
  • Increases the maximum local option lodging tax on hotel, motel and other rentals from 6 percent to 7 percent in most communities, and 6.5 percent to 7.5 percent for Boston.
  • Increases the local meals tax ceiling from .75 percent to 1 percent;
  • Adds a new local optionsurcharge of up to 5 percent on motor vehicle excise bills that can be dedicated to local stabilization funds – a provision that could benefit every community in Massachusetts.