Legislative Meeting (Wednesday)

All in attendance gathered Wednesday morning for the scheduled legislative meeting.

Current President Sharon Cockrum (Clinton) chaired the event and after a brief welcome introduced Past President Margie Bowman (Ray) who introduced her special guest Trish Vincent.

Trish is the Director of the Department of Revenue who apologized for the email sent out last week about the counties who provide tax records to DOR so that taxpayers can go to the Fee Agent Office for tags without needing their paid personal property tax receipt.

Trish said the DOR appreciates those counties who are involved in that program and said that the reason they are still asking taxpayers to bring their receipts is because having them is faster than looking it up, and in the event the system is down, the taxpayer can still be helped without being sent to the courthouse for a duplicate.

We basically learned for a variety of reasons the program, of which, about 40 of us participate in is not perfect. We received a pledge from Ms. Vincent that free agents will make every effort to look up records on line but asked that we continue to urge taxpayers to take the receipt with them and to emphasize it will make their stay at the fee agent office a shorter one.

I felt like Ms. Vincent and the Collector's in attendance left with a better understanding of the programs deficiencies and the difficulties both sides deal with as a result.

Legislative Chair Wayne Scharnhorst (Howell) and MCCA Governmental Consultant Mark Ausmus who made brief comments regarding the ebb and flow of various bills we were tracking as an association. Mainly SB 22 which was the county omnibus bill and dealt with the compensation for municipal collections. Of course you will remember and maybe followed the progress of the bill here, that the bill passed, however the collection language was removed before being finally agreed to.

There was no major legislation passed that will have an impact on our offices for the coming year.

Thanks was given to Mark and Mark in turn thanked those of us who spent time at the Capital during the closing weeks of session. Mark indicates that while there is some sitting and waiting for the firehouse alarm to sound, that when it comes time for action having the bodies available to implement a plan makes a big difference, in most cases, in the outcome of an issue.

Some of the legislation we attempted to get passed but failed to do so, including the protection of taxpayer records from being acquired under the Sunshine Law and then resold by a company for commercial uses is still alive for next session. Several groups who opposed the language of last years bill indicate they understand where we are coming from and will work with us this summer to develop language they can live with. So the point is, work is already underway for the next session which will convene in January of 2008.

After lunch the meeting was adjourned.