Authorizes municipalities and districts to enter into cooperative agreements for the provision of centralized public employee administrative and personnel services

Summary of provisions

Section 1: Amends General Municipal Law section 119-n to expand the definition of municipal corporation to include public libraries for the purpose of expanding the scope of Article 5-g of the General Municipal Law which relates to municipal cooperative agreements or activities.

Section 2: Amends subdivision 2 of section 199-o of the general municipal law to add a new paragraph (b-1) to specifically authorize municipalities to cooperatively establish a centralized administrative human resources or personal office to share responsibilities, the work and costs for the administration of certain employee personnel services such as: employee payroll, time & attendance; participation in the NYS Health Insurance program (NYSHIP); the establishment of shared use and selection of various health care plans for its municipal employees; employee participation in tax deferred retirement plans, health care or medical savings plans, and child care savings plans; and contracting with third party administrators to manage all shared employee health care benefits or tax deferred programs.

Section 3 is the effective date.

Justification

The cost of municipal government in New York continues to escalate, hence local real property taxes are increasing to support such governmental activities. Further, due to New York's declining tax base in many sections of New York, this had lead to further increases in municipal tax rates to compensate for the reduced assessed value of real property. The Purpose of this bill is to give municipalities the tools that they need to cooperatively provide services and administer municipal employee benefits. Managing municipal employee benefits are a major part of the cost of running local municipal governments particularly smaller municipalities. This bill attempts to enhance the ability of municipalities to cooperatively provide municipal employee benefits such as health insurance, and tax deferred employee plans such as retirement, health flex, medical savings plans and child care savings plans through a centralized human resources office. Further, it will allow municipalities to offer their employees the ability to participate in more health insurance plans that better reflect the needs of its employees. This increase in choice of plans can help to

reduce the cost of providing benefits because employees will be able to better select the benefit plans that matches their family's needs (which can be at a reduced cost). Further, by increasing a municipality's ability to offer different health plans, this can increase employee satisfaction and hopefully productivity.

This bill also can help to reduce the overhead costs that municipalities experience to administer employee benefits by specifically allowing municipalities to join forces to share the cost of administering the servicers performed by a personnel or human resources office or by the town or village clerk.

Legislative history

2011-12 -- S. 2843 - Passed Senate 2013-14 -- S. 1994 - Referred to Local Government

Fiscal implications

Anticipated savings for to local governments.

Effective date

This act shall take effect on the first of January next succeeding the date on which it shall have become a law.