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An ordinance amending Metropolitan Code of Law § 5.04.150 to clarify the distinction between an initial resolution and the capital spending plan.
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WHEREAS, prior to issuing most forms of debt, state law requires local governments, including the Metropolitan Government (“Metro”), to adopt an initial resolution stating the intent to issue such debt and identifying the maximum bond amount, maximum interest rate, and generalized project descriptions, and all such initial resolutions must be published in a newspaper of general circulation, with those for general obligation debt also subject to statelaw voter protest period requirements; and,
WHEREAS, the capital spending plan is a Metro-created legislative process for allocating and appropriating debt proceeds from Metro’s general obligation commercial paper and bond programs to specific capital projects; and,
WHEREAS, over time, Metro’s practices have conflated state-law initial resolutions with Metro’s capital spending plans, resulting in initial resolutions containing additional information, such as more granular project-specific details, that are not required by state law; and,
WHEREAS, the combination of the two separate pieces of legislation is not common practice among other Tennessee local governments and complicates Metro’s ability to more easily adjust a capital spending plan without triggering the passage of a new initial resolution that complies with the state-law requirements; and,
WHEREAS, the herein proposed amendment to the Metropolitan Code of Laws will preserve the Metropolitan Council’s current robust capital spending plan approval process and, by clearly separating capital spending plans from initial resolutions and recognizing them as distinct legislative actions, will allow the Metropolitan Council to reallocate unspent or unneeded project funding more efficiently by amending only the capital spending plan legislation and without triggering statelaw requirements applicable solely to ...
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