Three bills aimed at making the operation of municipal government more efficient advances in the state legislature.

Bill sponsor, State Senator Chris Connors says the first bill would expand the power of a municipality to cancel a delinquent charge or fee owed to them provided that amount is under $10. Connors says "under current law municipalities can discharge fees that are less than $10 for tax payments but not for water and sewer and other charges." He says often municipalities are forced to pay more to collect the actual amount.

Connors says the second measure, permits towns to increase the service charge for returned checks as long as they don't exceed the bank's charge. Under current law, the service fee imposed by a municipality or county can not exceed $20 per check regardless of what the bank is charging.

He says the third, would allow neighboring towns to share a Municipal Emergency Management Coordinator. "What happened was when the Legislature enacted the Shared Service Law there were very specific enactment's that were amended. Unfortunately, the ability to share an Emergency Management Coordinator was covered under the old Interlocal Government Services Act which was repealed by the enactment by the Share Services Law and so it was just an oversight that I think that when we passed this Shared Services Act we didn't notice that it did not include Emergency Management Coordinators."

All three bills passed out of committee and head to the full Senate for a vote.  Connors says a companion measure is awaiting a hearing in an Assembly Committee.

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