The Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies (AMWA) has announced that Dan Hartnett, who has served as its interim chief executive officer since July 2026, has been selected to serve as its CEO "on a permanent basis" effective Nov. 1, 2026. The announcement was reported by Water Finance and Management. For a municipal finance office, the news matters less for the individual than for the membership relationship the utility holds with the association, which will appear in a future budget.
A change at the top does not, on its own, alter what a utility pays or receives. Membership terms, dues schedules, and service lists are set in the association's governing documents and published materials, and those are the records to check. A leadership announcement tells a finance office who will sign letters and speak for the organization. It does not tell the office what the next invoice will say. Treat the two as separate questions, and answer the invoice question from the invoice.
Separate the Seat Into Its Parts
Municipal accounts often lump association membership into one line with conference registration, staff committee time, and subscriptions to regulatory tracking. Splitting that line before a leadership change makes the review manageable. Recurring dues are fixed by the association and approved within the utility's budget. Committee service is a staff time cost that does not appear as a payment at all. Conference travel is discretionary and can be cut without touching the membership. Each part responds differently to a change in leadership, and each deserves its own review.
The tradeoff is familiar. Dropping a seat saves the dues but can thin the record of what the utility heard, when, and from whom. Keeping every seat preserves that record but may carry costs no one has tested against actual use. The useful question is which committees utility staff used in the past two budget years, and whether those committees produced material the utility acted on. If the answer is unclear, the budget is guessing.
Timing the Review Against the Calendar
The effective date is Nov. 1, 2026, two days after this article is published. That leaves no realistic window for a formal budget revision before the change takes hold, and most municipal budget cycles do not reopen mid-year for a line this small. The practical step is to note the effective date in the finance file, ask the association for written confirmation of any change to dues, committee appointments, or member services, and place the review on the next budget calendar with a named owner.
Waiting costs little if the utility already has a written record. Waiting costs more if the only record is a staff member's memory of who sat on which call. A short memo, dated and filed with the budget workpapers, is enough to answer a board question later without relying on anyone's recollection.
The interim period that began in July 2026 may also have produced decisions, correspondence, or commitments that the finance office never saw because they passed through program staff. Ask utility representatives to list any association requests they handled during that period. A complete list is harder to assemble once the leadership title changes than before.
Questions to Put to the Association
Ask in writing whether the current membership agreement continues unchanged after Nov. 1. Ask whether committee appointments held by utility staff carry over or require renomination. Ask whether any member services are scheduled for change, and if so, with what notice. Ask whether the interim arrangement ends on the effective date or whether any interim commitments remain open. The answers belong in the file before the first invoice under the new leadership arrives.
None of these questions assumes the association will change anything. They assume the utility's file should be able to show what it relies on, and that a leadership transition is the moment that file gets tested. Budget offices that keep a list of which outside commitments support which operating decisions find these reviews quicker, and they encounter fewer surprises when the next invoice arrives.