Township bill finds life again in senate

LEE COUNTY – The April session of Lee County Economic Development’s Legislative Luncheon was focused on a township bill that was presumed dead, but has since been resurrected.
The bill, which originally came out as essentially a line item redaction of the term “township” in current law, has been tweaked a bit to retain township trustees, but as appointments by the board of supervisors. The county would also have final approval of township board budgets.
Lee County Supervisor Garry Seyb asked State Sen. Jeff Reichman about the bill after Reichman said at a public forum in Donnellson earlier this month it was his understanding the bill was all but dead.
Seyb said at that meeting that bills in the past have been known to be taken up again in the final hours of the session, and it appears that is what has happened with this bill.
Senate File 2431 was scheduled for additional floor debate next week, but county officials and township trustees said in that public forum they are not in favor of the bill moving forward.
“We had a public input meeting that garnered a lot of support for us maintaining a level of government that's closest to the people with our townships," he said.
At that meeting, (Sen. Reichman) was talking about that bill being dead, nothing to worry about, don’t put a second thought to it. It's not going anywhere.
“Now I'm hearing that in the Senate it is still very much alive and I'm just very concerned what that may look like."
Reichman was online briefly for the public information meeting earlier this month and told the group of about 70 there that the bill was essentially dead based on what he was hearing.
However, Reichman apologized on Friday, saying he was surprised when the bill was put back up for debate on the floor.
“I apologize. When I said that at that meeting, I had every reason to believe, and honestly believed, we weren’t going to see it again,” Reichman said.
“It did come up again and it got on the debate calendar (Thursday) and what I can say is it didn’t have the votes to  come out, but that’s not to say they won’t try again Monday.  Actually I think that’s the intent.”
He said there’s work underway to try to exempt the state’s larger counties.
“I was, like, absolutely not,” he said.
He said some trustees are elected by write-in votes with as little as four votes. He said there were some who didn’t even know they were trustees. He said he proposed to have county auditors responsible for more scrutiny in township operations.
He said if they amended the bill to include more training and scrutiny, that was something that he may be able to get behind.
“To be honest with you, a supervisor of maybe one political persuasion or another appointing people out in the townships. I just don't agree with that. You get another ‘yes' person for the supervisors, and as you said, this is the government closest to the people.
The bill, if eventually approved in any form, would have to go through  the House before moving forward and State Rep. Blaine Watkins said until that time, it’s the senate’s to deal with, but he didn’t support the bill as written.
“I’m not a fan,” Watkins said. “I don’t like that idea. I hung out at that meeting. I just don’t understand what dollars and cents are being saved here and I’m trying to understand more on that front.
“Here’s the deal, people are trying to get out of there this week. The idea that they're going to pass a deal over there and send it to us, when we’re already having all these other conversations, you’re really going to have to have some heavy hitters who want it and I don’t really think we have anybody on the House side that knows about it, that really understands what’s going on in the Senate with that.”
The legislature is still trying to sort out property tax changes which have been a priority of the governor, and progress is being made with still much to sort out. They are also still in talks around the state budget as legislator per diems run out.