Thank you Bill for your interpretation and insight. I concur what would be best for Falmouth is to adopt MMA's GA ordinance entirely, therefore including the 120 day provision. There is still time to perhaps add this to the agenda for Monday evenings meeting as an introduction. Therefore, we can hold the public hearing in December and adopt both the maximum levels of assistance and ordinance in January. Kathleen
Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2007 12:58 PM To: Kathleen Babeu Cc: Nathan Poore Subject: General Assistance
Kathleen Some time ago, Nathan asked me to look at the Falmouth General Assistance Ordinance. I was given the MMA model as a possible template for Falmouth and was specifically asked to examine whether Falmouth could use a table of maximum levels of assistance as an appendix that could be amended by order of the Town Council rather than have the table be part of the Ordinance, which means that the table can only be amended by the more cumbersome ordinance process. With respect to the maximum levels of assistance, I noted that 22 MRSA 4305(3-A) states that levels of assistance are established by ordinance. I thought about whether that requirement could be met by an ordinance provision which delegated authority to adopt the levels of assistance to the Council, acting by order. My conclusion is that, although the outcome is not free from doubt, a court is likely not to approve that approach in light of the explicit statutory language. I "ran this by" the Legal Services
Department at MMA (Becky Seel). They discussed the issue internally and concluded "that both the initial maximum levels of assistance and any subsequent changes must be adopted by ordinance in order to comply with the statute." They cautioned that, if a court found that the Town had not properly adopted its schedule of maximum levels, then the court might say that there are no maximum levels. In the final analysis, I would advise against trying to do this by order instead of ordinance. (Remember that the Charter has special procedures for emergency ordinances that might be considered for use here.) I also read through the MMA model. It is, obviously, much more complete than Falmouth's ordinance. One thing of substance that I noticed is that the period of ineligibility for benefits - see definition of "just cause" - is 60 days in the Falmouth ordinance whereas the MMA model uses 120 days. The statute, 22 MRSA 4316-A, was amended in 1993 to state 120 days and Falmouth should comply with that after amending its ordinance or adopting the MMA model. Falmouth should consider adopting the MMA model. I suspect
that MMA periodically provides member towns with updates to the model. It is more thorough than what we have now. However, as the person in charge of GA, you may have insights into this that lead to the opposite conclusion. I would be happy to discuss it further. Bill
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