The Auditor General’s office issued a press release yesterday calling on the General Assembly to come up with a fix for the host fee established under Act 71 of 2004. A recent Supreme Court decision severed the language creating the host fee due to a lawsuit over the uniformity of the municipal portion of the host fee.
The release does not spell out a specific recommendation for a fix to achieve uniformity (should the new language specify a percentage or a flat dollar amount?) but does chronicle the amount several municipalities and counties are receiving from the host fee currently. The court decision came with a stay for 120 days, but the General Assembly has only a few days left in the session and many county and municipal budgets run on a calendar year rather than a fiscal one.