What's happening
This bill allows local governments and districts to jointly create centralized offices for public employee administrative and personnel services.
Why it matters
Enables smaller municipalities and districts to pool resources. , potentially leading to significant cost savings and professionalization by sharing specialized administrative staff for HR, payroll, and benefits, which individual entities might otherwise struggle to afford.
May improve service quality and consistency. for public employees, as centralized offices can standardize policies and processes, reduce errors, and ensure better compliance with state and federal regulations across participating entities.
Allows for broader employee benefit access. including health insurance, retirement, and flexible savings plans—by facilitating collective participation in state-run or third-party programs, which could improve recruitment and retention of quality staff, especially in smaller or rural districts.
Introduces flexibility through third-party contracting. , permitting the centralized office to engage outside experts or vendors for specialized services, which could further enhance efficiency and access to up-to-date HR technologies or best practices.
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Who cares
Headline styles
Share HR Services Across Towns
Plain English, a few words. Used as the page title.
Sponsors
Senator · Senate District 38
No co-sponsors yet.
History
- Referred to local government
- Referred to local government
Full text
2 pagesUnderlined is new[Struck] is removedOfficial text on nysenate.gov ↗
STATE OF NEW YORK
1398
2019-2020 Regular Sessions
IN SENATE
January 14, 2019
Introduced by Sen. CARLUCCI -- read twice and ordered printed, and when printed to be committed to the Committee on Local Government
AN ACT to amend the general municipal law, in relation to authorizing cities, towns, villages, school districts, boards of cooperative educational services, library districts, fire districts, improvement districts and special districts to enter into cooperative agreements for the provision of centralized public employee administrative and personnel services
The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows:
Section 1. Subdivision a of section 119-n of the general municipal law, as amended by chapter 413 of the laws of 1991, is amended to read as follows:
a. The term "municipal corporation" means a county outside the city of New York, a city, a town, a village, a board of cooperative educational services, a public library as defined in section two hundred fifty-three of the education law, a fire district or a school district.
§ 2. Subdivision 2 of section 119-o of the general municipal law is amended by adding a new paragraph b-1 to read as follows:
b-1. The establishment of a centralized office to collectively provide:
(i) employee payroll, time, attendance and personnel administration services;
(ii) participation in the New York state health insurance program;
(iii) a personnel office to provide information on employee health insurance and other employee benefits;
(iv) employee participation in tax deferred retirement plans, health care or medical savings plans, college savings plans, and child care savings plans;
(v) any other function or activity typically performed by a personnel or human resources office; and
EXPLANATION--Matter in italics (underscored) is new; matter in brackets
[ ] is old law to be omitted.
LBD06463-01-9
S. 1398 2
(vi) contracting with qualified third parties for the provision of any service necessary to carry out such office's powers and duties.
§ 3. This act shall take effect on the first of January next succeeding the date on which it shall have become a law.
Reflowed for reading: line numbers and page breaks removed. Cite the official text.
Sponsor's memo
Title of bill
An act to amend the general municipal law, in relation to authorizing cities, towns, villages, school districts, boards of cooperative educa- tional services, library districts, fire districts, improvement districts and special districts to enter into cooperative agreements for the provision of centralized public employee administrative and person- nel services
Purpose
To enhance the ability of municipalities to join forces and cooperative- ly provide and mange employee benefits in a manner that reduces the cost of providing such benefits but which is also able to give municipal employees more choices in the benefits provided. Further, it clearly enables municipalities to, cooperatively administer such employee bene- fits and other administrative personnel overhead costs to help lower the overall cost of municipal government.
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.
Read the full memo (634 words)
Section 2: Amends subdivision 2 of section 199-o of the general munici- pal law to add a new paragraph (b-1) to specifically authorize munici- palities 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 govern- mental 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 munici- palities. This bill attempts to enhance the ability of municipalities to cooperatively provide municipal employee benefits such as health insur- ance, 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
2017-18: S1735/A1488 - LOCAL GOV'T/local gov'ts 2015-16 - S4255/A6343 - Rules/local governments 2013-14 -- S. 2011-12 -- S. 2843 - Passed 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.
Summaries, headlines and scores are AI-generated from the official bill text. How we score bills. Source: NYS Open Legislation.