Landlords of Linn County
PO Box 202
Marion, IA 52302
HF 2323, our bill which expands utility lien protections, was enrolled and sent to Governor Branstad yesterday. I have visited with the Governor’s lobbyist about HF 2323. We’re not expecting any problems. The Governor has 3 days to deal with the bill. We expect him to sign it. It will happen yet this week.
From Joe Kelly.
Here is a copy of the bill as it looks in enrolled form.
The municipal utilities are making a late attempt to defeat HF 2323, the city enterprise services bill. Attached is a revised information sheet on the bill. I’ve made one change to counter an argument the municipal utilities are using. They are complaining that they will have difficulty indentifying the user of the enterprise services. Their first hope is to kill the bill. Their second objective is to keep the requirement that landlords have to notify the municipal utility each time a tenancy changes. The reason for that objective is they know most landlords won’t do the notification in a timely manner, if at all.
Some of you have asked me what do we do know. The answer is to make your contacts with your Iowa Senator, either the Senator whose district you live in, or the Senator who represents a district where you own some properties. Some of you will have more than one Senator that you can contact.
Ask for their support of HF 2323.
Joe
SSB 3090 is now SF 2300. For those of you who have contacted your Senators asking for support of SSB 3090, you can now send an e-mail pointing out that SSB 3090 is now SF 2300. It gives you a chance to mention the need for this bill again. If you determine that your Senator is supportive, you could ask your Senator to relay that message of support to Senator Jeff Danielson. When Senator Danielson gets both Democrats and Republicans coming to him stating their support for the bill, it can have an impact.
If you haven’t made your contact yet, what are you waiting for? I’m watching the city lobbyists working against SF 2300. We’re going to need everyone’s help to get this bill moving. SF 2300 is on the Senate debate calendar. Not all the bills on the Senate debate calendar are going to get debated. We’re competing with the other bills for floor time.
http://coolice.legis.state.ia.us/Cool-ICE/default.asp?Category=billinfo&Service=Billbook&menu=false&hbill=sf2300
Legislative Update from Joe Kelly
Rep. Jeff Kaufmann is going to file the bill at 4:30 on Monday afternoon. This action gives you more time to contact Iowa House members for co-sponsorship. Hats off to the Pott County group who have both of their House members signed up as co-sponsors.
In summary, the bill will change the current law so that you would only have to register your property once with the municipal utility. You would not have to notify the utility each time a tenancy changes. And the bill would add other city enterprise services to the lien protection provisions of the law: sewerage, water runoff, trash collection fees, etc.
We need a big push between now and late Monday afternoon. The e-mail address for your House members is as follows: first name, followed by a period (.) last name, @legis.state.ia.us……like jeff.kaufmann@legis.state.ia.us
The phone number for the House members is 515-281-3221.
The Governor’s bill is different from the House Republican bill, HSB 500. Both bills will be passed out of the House Ways & Means Committee. Obviously, at some point in the near future, the Governor and the House Republicans will have to come to an agreement on which bill to propose to the Senate, or some version of the two bills.
Governor Branstad’s bill calls for a 40% reduction for commercial property taxpayers over an 8 year period. That’s 5% a year, compared to the 2.85% in HSB 500. HSB 519 guarantees the first three years of the plan. There are some scenarios where the cuts could be stopped if certain economic growth goals aren’t met. The Governor’s advisors don’t expect the stoppage to happen, since the growth goals are reasonable and fair.
The landlords’ Day on the Hill will be held on Wednesday, February 22nd, beginning at 10:00 a.m.
We begin our meeting at the Lucas State Office Building Cafeteria (6th floor), 321 E. 12th, in Des Moines. The Lucas Building is directly east of the Capitol and connected to the Capitol by means of a tunnel.
Material from HF 783, vetoed in 2007
384.84 (4) (d) & (e)
d. Residential rental property where a charge for water
service is separately metered and paid directly to the city
utility or enterprise by the tenant is exempt from a lien for
delinquent rates or charges associated with such water service
if the landlord gives written notice to the city utility or
enterprise that the property is residential rental property
and that the tenant is liable for the rates or charges. A
city utility or enterprise may require a deposit not exceeding
the usual cost of ninety days of water service to be paid to
the utility or enterprise. Upon receipt, the utility or
enterprise shall acknowledge the notice and deposit. A
written notice shall contain thename of the tenant
responsible for charges,address of the residential rental
property that the tenant is to occupy,and the date that the
occupancy begins.A change in tenant shall require a new
written notice to be given to the city utility or enterprise
within ten business days of the change in tenant.When the
tenant moves from the rental property, the city utility or
enterprise shall return the deposit if the water service
charges are paid in full. A change in the ownership of the
residential rental property shall require written notice of
such change to be given to the city utility or enterprise
within ten business days of the completion of the change of
ownership. The lien exemption for rental property does not
apply to charges for repairs to a water service if the repair
charges become delinquent.
e. Residential rental property where a charge for any of
the services of sewer systems, storm water drainage systems,
sewage treatment, solid waste collection, and solid waste
disposal is paid directly to the city utility or enterprise by
the tenant is exempt from a lien for delinquent rates or
charges associated with such services if the landlord gives
written notice to the city utility or enterprise that the
property is residential rental property and that the tenant is
liable for the rates or charges. A city utility or enterprise
may require a deposit not exceeding the usual billing cycle cost
of the services of sewer systems, storm water drainage
systems, sewage treatment, solid waste collection, and solid
waste disposal to be paid to the utility or enterprise. Upon
receipt, the utility or enterprise shall acknowledge the
notice and deposit. A written notice shall contain the
address of the residential rental property that the tenant is
to occupy and the date that the occupancy begins. When the
tenant moves from the rental property, the city utility or
enterprise shall return the deposit if the charges for the
services of sewer systems, storm water drainage systems,
sewage treatment, solid waste collection, and solid waste
disposal are paid in full. A change in the ownership of the
residential rental property shall require written notice of
such change to be given to the city utility or enterprise
within ten business days of the completion of the change of
ownership. The lien exemption for rental property does not
apply to charges for repairs related to a service of sewer
systems, storm water drainage systems, sewage treatment, solid
waste collection, and solid waste disposal if the repair
charges become delinquent.
The Republican House, the Democratic Senate and Gov. Terry Branstad’s administration all agree that relief must be provided to commercial property owners, House Speaker Kraig Paulsen and Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal told a crowd over lunch at the Iowa Taxpayers Association’s annual meeting in West Des Moines.
“From an institutional level, this is the first time … that you have the House, the Senate and the governor’s office all interested in addressing the issue at the same time,” Paulsen, R-Hiawatha, said. “That’s never happened before.”
All the reform efforts focus primarily on commercial property, which is currently taxed on 100 percent of its assessed valuation — a rate substantially higher than that of residential and agricultural property in Iowa and higher than commercial rates in nearby states.
Still, the proposals developed by the House and Senate diverge substantially in how the tax cut would be structured and paid for.
House Republicans want to reduce the percentage of valuation on which all commercial and industrial properties are taxed, and to limit the increases in tax rates that local governments — including school districts — can pursue in a given year, said House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Thomas Sands, R-Wapello.
The cost to local governments of such reductions and limitations to their tax base would be offset by revenue growth that will occur for other reasons — but not through state assistance, he said.
The Democratic proposal, meanwhile, would cut taxes for all commercial properties but offer bigger reductions for smaller and, ostensibly, locally based businesses, said Senate Ways and Means Committee Chairman Joe Bolkcom.
“We love Wal-Mart, we love Menards and we love Best Buy, but simply sending tens of millions of dollars to their out-of-state headquarters doesn’t do much for the schools, doesn’t do much to maintain our roads and the local services we all depend on,” Bolkcom, D-Iowa City, said. “We make a choice here to focus on small, Main Street businesses.”
The cost to local governments of the reduction would be offset with state funds, which Bolkcom and Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, argue are available.
During the last session, Branstad, a Republican, pushed lawmakers to drop the level at which commercial property is taxed to 60 percent of assessed valuation over five years, at a cost of $200 million per year.
Branstad spokesman Tim Albrecht said Tuesday the governor is meeting with state and local officials on the issue, but has not yet developed a proposal for the coming session. Nonetheless, it’s a top concern.
“This will be, along with education reform, the single top priority for the governor this upcoming legislative session,” Albrecht said. “Any property tax reform will have to reduce property taxes on Iowa’s job creators, and it must be a permanent solution.”
In addition to education reforms, legislative leaders said they would focus on economic development proposals and increased scrutiny on tax increment financing, a technique used by cities to develop or redevelop certain districts. Increased tax revenues in a district are used to pay for public improvements such as streets and sewers.
A lawsuit alleging that managers of two Des Moines apartment buildings for the elderly and disabled turned a blind eye to a growing bedbug infestation for more than two years will now be allowed to proceed as a class action, a Polk County judge ruled Thursday.
Polk County Senior Judge Joel Novak certified the class in a 27-page ruling that’s expected to eventually spark new settlement talks between residents and the owners of Elsie Mason Manor and Ligutti Towers.
Lawyers for roughly 300 current and former residents of the low-income apartment buildings first filed the lawsuit in March 2010 seeking money for back rent, lost property and other hardships because of a bedbug problem stretching back to late 2007.
Residents at the time complained that they’d been repeatedly bitten, forced to discard infested furniture and shunned both by relatives and other landlords too afraid to rent to them. While some residents are believed to have escaped with only emotional damage and laundry bills, others suffered repeated property losses and medical costs.
“Everybody sleeps on the floor,” Elsie Mason resident Robert Hobbs said in an interview last year describing infested furniture. “You have to.”
Court papers say the bedbugs eventually were brought under control after building officials last year hired a new exterminating company that treated both facilities with 120-degree heat.
The head of American Baptist Homes of the Midwest, a Minnesota agency that manages the buildings for the First Baptist Elderly Housing Foundation in Johnston, has previously acknowledged mistakes by on-site managers — including failures to aggressively treat the infestation or to deal appropriately with resident complaints.
American Baptist President Dave Zwickey could not be reached for comment Thursday. He earlier has said the organization intends to settle with residents eventually, once court proceedings sort out who is owed money and how much.
According to Novak’s ruling, evidence presented so far indicates that several hundred possible plaintiffs share common complaints involving personal injury and misrepresentation by building management. Iowa law allows such cases to be handled together when they share common legal issues and when it would be impractical for each individual person to bring his or her own lawsuit.
“This case, in fact, seems to be the paradigm for when a class action is appropriate; a case attempting to vindicate the rights of a group of people who individually would be without effective strength to bring their opponents into court at all,” the judge ruled.
Plaintiffs’ attorney Jeffrey Lipman on Thursday described class certification as the case’s first major hurdle for residents attempting to show that their claim should be taken seriously.
“Conventional wisdom is that that’s your fight is class certification,” the lawyer said. “It’s a class action now.”
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