Washington legislative wrap-up: 1994.

• Author: Wallick, Ruth

The GFOA's Federal Liaison Center wrote a year ago that the first session of the 103rd Congress was considered by many to have been the most productive in 40 years. Many would consider the second session of that Congress to have been just the opposite. It was marked by contentiousness, partisanship, posturing and, in the Senate, an extraordinary use of the filibuster to block legislation. The result for state and local governments was that the major portion of the programs and issues about which they cared the most died or remained unresolved at the end of the 103rd Congress.

The accompanying chart tracks the major issues and what happened to them. While for some of the legislative proposals GFOA has not necessarily provided active support for all aspects of the programs, these bills contain specific provisions on which GFOA has taken policy positions. This was the case, for instance, with the environmental programs except for the issue of flow control. In other legislation, such as flow control and tax-exempt bond relief, the association strongly supported the proposals and worked for their enactment. GFOA also aggressively pursued revisions to the many health care proposals under congressional consideration. These activities are discussed in the Pension & Benefits Report on page 48.

As the chart shows, there were a few bright spots in the record of the second session of the 103rd Congress. The major anticrime bill, which was vigorously supported by many state and local government groups, incorporated the Local Partnership Act, which GFOA supported. The airport improvement legislation was enacted without authority to escrow disputed airport fee increases, a provision which GFDA opposed. There were provisions in the Community Development and Regulatory Improvement Act that included changes and timing provisions regarding collateralization of public deposits that were supported by GFOA. The provisions of the Bankruptcy Act amendments regarding the security of property tax liens and the ability of public pension systems to participate in bankruptcy reorganization equity and debtor committees have long been GFOA policy.

Two subject areas emerged during 1994 that had not been on GFOA's legislative agenda at the beginning of 1994: the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and flow control. As the details of the new GATT became known, it was clear that state and local governments would have to work to insure that the new agreement would not allow automatic preemption of state and local laws by trade dispute settlements in which the state and local governments played no role. GFOA, with vigorous assistance from the association's grass-roots network of FOCAL Teams (Finance Officers Calling for Action on Legislation), joined with several other state and local government groups in persuading members of Congress to include in the GATT implementing legislation strong provisions prohibiting automatic preemption of state and local laws. The GATT implementing legislation was to be considered in a lame duck session of Congress at the end of November and beginning of December. If Congress does not accept GATT, the administration will surely press for further consideration in 1995.

GFOA's FOCAL Teams also were especially active in contacting their U.S. Senators and Representatives regarding the need for federal legislation to permit state and local governments to direct or otherwise regulate the movement of locally generated municipal solid waste (MSW) and to designate the facilities at which MSW will be managed (referred to as flow control). Flow control was found by the U.S. Supreme Court in a May 1994 decision (C. & A. Carbone v. the Town of Clarkstown) to violate the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution by discriminating against interstate commerce. GFOA and a number of other groups...