Expands provisions providing for consolidation of local governments to include counties and cities having a population of less than one million

Summary of provisions

Sections 1 through 3 amend various sections of the general municipal law expand applicability from "town or village" to a "local government entity" not having a population over one million.

Section 4 and 9 amends section 754 and 762 of the general municipal law to lengthen the time required for notice of public hearings from ten to twenty days to twenty to thirty days and addresses the time for the hearing expanding it also to twenty to thirty days.

Section 5 expands section 755 of the general municipal law, Referendum resolution, to include cities or counties as well as towns or villages.

Section 6 and 7 expands section 757, subsections 1, 2 and 3, and sections 758 and 761 of the general municipal law to expand the procedures for local government consolidation to include cities or counties.

Section 8 amends section 761 of the general municipal law to add city to the list of entities which must make available the consolidation plan and a descriptive summary thereof.

Sections 10 and 11 amends section 763 of the general municipal law to expand the petition procedures from town to town, village, city or county and decrease the percentage of signatures required to five percent of the number of electors.

Section 12 amends section 765, subsection 6, of the municipal law to expand the dissolution of courts to encompass more than local justices.

Section 13 amends section 33 of the municipal home rule law by adding paragraph f to address the merger of local governments.

Justification

Article 17-A to the General Municipal Law created a locally initiated and standardized that merging local governments could merge some or all of their operations. This proposal was designed to allow adjoining towns, villages, cities or counties (outside New York City), or any combination thereof, to merge into a single local government a there are limited opportunities for local government implementation of mergers. This was because there was no one standard procedure for merging the operation of municipal governments. Hence what complicates this is that the prospective merging municipalities are negotiations substance and procedure at the same time.

Every time two municipal governments wished to merge, these entities had to plan, design and implement their own independently developed merger plan. Of those processes which did exist, they addressed only "same type" governments, and did not address cities or counties at all, The benefit of the bill was that it facilitates a municipality's ability to use one set standard municipal merger process instead of crafting its own procedure to merge on an individual basis and then petitioning the state legislature to enact a special merger law.

Local officials have stated that in times of fiscal crisis substantial interest has been generated in locally initiated merger procedures. Sometimes there is a window of opportunity for local governments to seriously evaluate service and governing needs for their communities and for them to determine how they might combine structures with neighboring local governments facing the same needs.

The original bill, Chapter 74 of 2009, established a general merger procedure to give local governments the means to take advantage of this "window of opportunity" for local mergers. However, the language passed was lacking and was not expansive enough to include many municipal entities. This bill addresses this issue by amending certain sections to expand from simply Towns and sometimes Villages to include villages, Cities, and Counties.

Legislative history

New Bill.

Local fiscal implications

Consolidation of local government structures is expected to provide long term savings to those local governments.

Effective date

This act shall take effect on the one hundred eightieth day after it shall have become a law.