Committees of Conference have wrapped up, meaning that there is only one more day for this year’s legislative session (other than veto override day). On Thursday, both the House and Senate will meet to vote on the recommendations made by the committees of conference. The bills of municipal interest that received a favorable committee of conference report include: 

• HB 211, relative to a report by the department of energy on the effectiveness of the system benefits charge; relative to surface water setbacks for landfills; and relative to water quality. (Senate acceded to the House.) 

• HB 281, relative to least cost integrated resource plans of utilities; municipal hosts for purposes of limited electrical energy producers; the cost of compliance with disclosure of electric renewable portfolio standards; repealing the energy efficiency and sustainable energy board; and procedures for energy facility siting by the site evaluation committee. (House acceded to the Senate.) 

• HB 611, relative to eligibility criteria for the therapeutic cannabis program; establishing a commission to study state-controlled sales of cannabis; and relative to the prohibition on the sale of hemp products containing certain levels of THC. (House acceded to the Senate with an additional amendment.) 

• SB 78, relative to subdivision regulations on the completion of improvements. (Committee agreed to replace “may” with “shall” in the sentence stating: “A planning board may allow road and utility construction to start without a bond, however, a bond for the infrastructure, roads, and utilities must be in place prior to the sale of any parcel of land within the subdivision or a request for a building permit for structures for human occupation.”)

We anticipate that it will be a short session on Thursday with each body only considering a dozen-or-so committee of conference reports. After Thursday, the legislature will turn its attention to retained and referred bills, but only after a short break for the summer. 

Next week, we will publish a summary of the session along with a list of new laws that affect municipalities. On August 2, we will be hosting a “Legislative Wrap-Up” webinar and will release the Final Bulletin, summarizing all of the new laws affecting municipalities. Additionally, we are working on crafting a handful of training opportunities geared toward some of the more specialized topics that were considered during this legislative session, so stay tuned for future training opportunities.