The current “combo” bill being considered ignores the provisions of HB 645 (the only bill that addresses anything substantive).

The J-2 Committee was barraged by the grassroots to fix the original proposed committee substitute bill (PCS) that was a combination of the League’s bill and an equally bad bill, HB 524.  The PCS took the worst parts of those bills and then added even worse provisions.

On Monday, despite the intent to push through this PCS bill, the J-2 Committee switched gears and seemed to be concerned about real annexation reform.  There was hope that the J-2 committee might actually fix the “combo” bill to include real reforms.

Instead, the current “combo bill (the new PCS) is even worse than the original PCS bill that already was a disaster.

The question now is whether amendments will be considered in the committee later today, and whether any of them will pass.  If not, I believe (not sure though) that the grassroots will strongly oppose passage of the bill out of J-2.

Here’s the lowlights of the new PCS:

– Allows municipalities to provide services to areas that don’t need services
– Expressly allows (for the first time ever) municipalities to duplicate existing services.  Example: A city could contract with the county to provide one extra sheriff to an area that has excellent police service and the city could then say: “We provided police protection.”
– Municipalities could annex even if they couldn’t provide police protection, fire protection, AND water and sewer.
– Directs the LGC to provide meaningless oversight.  The LGC isn’t exactly a neutral-body: there are five appointed members to the LGC–four have direct ties to municipalities.
– The LGC isn’t particularly adept at overseeing anything beyond limited debt issues (See the Randy Parton Theater for its ineptness when it tries to do anything more)
– Ignores the call for counties, which can at least provide a representative voice, to provide the oversight.
– The PCS continues to force property owners to pay for the costs of getting the water and sewer lines to their properties–the same water and sewer services they didn’t want or need in the first place.  These costs can easily exceed over $10,000.
– There’s no vote.

The J-2 Committee has a chance today to fix these problems.  Some members on the committee need to start showing some leadership.