Committee approves local charter cleanup for City of Erin, raises discretionary spending threshold

The Private Acts Committee on April 7 approved House Bill 14-38, a local charter cleanup for the City of Erin, sending the measure on to the State and Local Government Committee.

Sponsor Representative Reed told the committee the bill is “a 10 page document” intended largely as cleanup after a year of work, and said some changes are punctuation or wording rather than substantive policy changes. Representative Reed said he could not answer all specifics during his initial remarks.

Committee legal staff identified specific edits the sponsor described. Mark Dobie of the Office of Legal Services said the bill removes certain defined terms from the charter (including a reference to a city judge) and changes the disbursement policy so that “any expenditure in excess of $2,500,” the prior threshold, “shall have the prior approval of the board” becomes any expenditure in excess of $5,000. Committee members asked for section references during a brief legal review; staff pointed to Section 3 (definitions), deleted subdivisions A.5 and A.9, and to section 35 on page 9 for the disbursement change.

With no further questions for the sponsor, the committee voted. The clerk reported the vote as 10 ayes and 0 noes. The committee chair announced HB 14-38 passes and will move to the State and Local Government Committee.

The bill text was described in committee as largely technical cleanup; committee legal staff supplied the mapping to charter sections. No amendments were offered during the committee meeting.