Senate OKs Bills Setting Stage for Municipal Sharing

The Rhode Island Senate on Wednesday passed the first two of six bills that a commission recommended to help pave the way for Rhode Island cities and towns to share municipal services.

The two bills were sponsored by last year’s commission leader Sen. Louis P. DiPalma (D-Dist. 12, Middletown, Newport, Tiverton, Little Compton) and clear the way for a nonbinding question to be placed on the next statewide ballot seeking voters’ opinions about sharing municipal services and create a permanent legislative commission to continue work in these areas. State Representatives in the General Assembly will next take at look at both bills for consideration.
“There’s no doubt that sharing services can save cities and towns money, at the very least, on administrative costs, and that means lower property taxes,” Senator DiPalma said in a prepared statement issued by a General Assembly spokesperson. “But there’s a lot of study and work that need to be done ahead of time to figure out logistics. And before any of that is done, we need to know whether Rhode Islanders are interested in sharing. Sometimes sharing can mean ceding some level of local control, and we have to make sure Rhode Islanders understand that and are supportive before we make investments of their money in sharing programs.”

The first bill (2011-H 0075) puts a nonbonding referendum on the 2012 statewide ballot asking voters whether they are interested in increased sharing of services by their cities, towns and school districts.

The other bill (2011-H 0171) creates a permanent joint legislative commission to continually work to make sharing services possible. Senator DiPalma’s study commission recommended the creation of a permanent commission, and also recommended that this panel begin by initially addressing four areas for potential sharing: information technology (IT), public safety dispatch, tax assessment and tax collections. The earlier commission set a goal of a 20-percent savings in five years in those areas of government through sharing.

That commission also recommended four other bills that Senator DiPalma has introduced to pave the way for the sharing of services by creating a uniform system of financial record-keeping, enabling an organization to administer retiree benefits for schools and municipalities, and helping municipalities share individual employees. Rep. Raymond E. Gallison Jr. (D-Dist. 69, Bristol, Portsmouth) have introduced them in the House.

“There are significant potential savings to be had if cities, towns and school districts can get together on administering services,” Senator DiPalma continued. “Our state has talked about it for years, but there have always been factors that make sharing complicated, including the multiple employee contracts and pension systems that vary from place to place and the difficulty of sharing and comparing information when each municipality or school district has a different system of tracking its expenses and other records. These bills are aimed at making it easier to compare information and make fact-based, data-driven decisions, which will lay the groundwork for communities that are interested in sharing to reduce their overall costs.”

The other bills, which have all had committee hearings but have not yet come out of committee, are:

2011-H 0050 and 2011-H 0051 – This legislation provides for the creation of a group similar to the Rhode Island Interlocal Risk Management Trust, to which many communities belong, to administer other post-employment benefits (OPEB), such as health care, for cities and towns, and schools, respectively.

2011-H 0052 – This bill establishes a uniform chart of accounts for municipalities. Having a uniform chart of accounts will make it easier for communities to compare costs and make fact-based, data-driven decisions about sharing services, and would also ease transitions when communities do share.

2011-H 0072 – This legislation would change teacher retirement laws to better position school districts to share individual employees by counting service in more than one district toward the teacher’s pension eligibility.