LANSING – A package of bills designed to allow a group of local governments to apply for land surrounding major assets, like airports, to be mostly tax-free as a way to convince new businesses to locate around such facilities, passed the Legislature on Thursday.

Separately:

FILM CREDITS: The House approved two measures aimed at making the state’s film credit process more transparent (SB 889 , 99-1; SB 796 , 97-2). The legislation requires the state film office to report on how many Michigan residents were employed by film productions and how many tax credit requests had been received.

PHISHING: So-called phishing websites and emails that look legitimate but are meant to collect personal data would be banned under SB 149 (99-1) and SB 150 (97-1), which also passed the House.

Now known as the Next Michigan Development legislation, the bills originally came about as a result of Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano’s proposed aerotropolis, which seeks to turn the area between and around Detroit Metro and Willow Run airports into a logistics hub.

They sailed through the House, but ran into resistance in the Senate, primarily because Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson said the bills as initially written would give Wayne County a competitive advantage in the Detroit region. That led to the legislation being broadened to enable other local governments to band together to seek similar tax-free status for certain areas around major assets.

Still, the final negotiations were protracted and produced a slimmed down version of the legislation (HB 5346 , HB 5347 and HB 5349 ).

The bills would allow the creation of up to five so-called Next Michigan Development Corporations, interlocal agreements designed to foster development around a major transportation asset. The bills would limit the number of businesses that can receive renaissance zone tax benefits to 10 within any corporation district and no more than 25 statewide.

Within an individual Next Michigan Development Corporation district, the corporation could designate up to 12 geographic areas for renaissance zones. The total territory of the renaissance zones cannot exceed the lesser of 200 acres times the number of designated zones or 1,675 acres. The renaissance zones must be at least five years in duration and no more than 10 years.

House concurrence came later Friday morning with a 79-15 vote on HB 5349 and 84-11 on HB 5346. No concurrence vote was needed on HB 5347.

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