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House Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
House of Representatives
Session of 2013 - 2014
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | April 15, 2014 01:57 PM |
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| From: | Representative Joseph T. Hackett and Rep. Thomas R. Caltagirone |
| To: | All House members |
| Subject: | Municipal Recycling Fees |
| Colleagues: In the very near future, we will be introducing legislation to reverse a recent Commonwealth Court decision regarding municipal recycling programs. In their ruling in the case of City of Reading v. Iezzi, the Court held that, because neither Act 101 nor the Solid Waste Management Act expressly grants municipalities the power to charge a fee for their recycling programs, these fees are invalid. However, there is nothing in Act 101 or the SWMA that expressly prohibits the collection of these fees either. This is yet another example of judges feeling it is appropriate to legislate from the bench. Therefore, we will introduce the attached legislation, which will explicitly grant municipalities who are subject to Act 101 recycling programs the power to charge residents a reasonable fee so that they can appropriately budget for these services annually. In addition, it will provide immunity to those municipalities who had collected fees prior to the Reading decision from any civil action to reclaim these fees. While there are several DEP grant opportunities to help municipalities fund their recycling programs, these are not a dedicated funding stream and cannot be relied on when local governments are going through their annual budget process. Municipalities need something more dependable to base their operating budgets on than whether or not they will receive DEP grant money. Otherwise, the Act 101 requirements to implement a recycling program amount to an unfunded mandate on our municipalities. Please don’t hesitate to contact our offices if you have any questions or concerns and we hope you will consider joining us on this legislation. |
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| View Attachment | ||
Introduced as HB2266