Well, we’ve just completed a couple of rounds of legislative updates on land use/housing bills from the 2025 legislative session (ULCT-APA Utah joint session; ULUI Spring Conference, links to presentation slides here). One thing has become painfully obvious to me from these – we are overwhelming our cities and counties with stuff they have to do to comply with all the new requirements of state legislation. We couldn’t even get through all the new provisions passed in either of these updates, there was just too much to talk about and too many questions. In St. George, we spent nearly 10 minutes talking about code enforcement, and that was the topic of a bill that didn’t even pass this session!
This is all from just this year’s legislative session. I’ve also heard from a number of planners that they are having a hard time getting all the things implemented from the last couple of legislative sessions. I haven’t heard from anyone who says they are completely up-to-date – most are still struggling to get through the list of things to be done.
And it sounds like there will be more coming. Cam Diehl, the League executive director, told me he was invited to a meeting last week where business and chamber of commerce types enumerated the things they intend to push for in the next legislative session. Cam and others have voiced concerns about the number of directives being piled up lately and have said we should take a time out to see if all the things that have been enacted are effective or not. I’d say in addition, many jurisdictions haven’t even been able to implement them yet, so how will we really know if they are effective? Time out! Please!
But I don’t think that’s likely. As I noted in my legislative update presentation, from this year’s bills passed, there were about 765 new lines of code added to the LUDMA (in addition to about 300 lines each year for the last few years), and land use provisions were also added to about 10 different titles in the state code besides the LUDMA (would you know where to find these? Most people won’t).
The League has determined that they probably need to set up a training session just for the provisions in one bill – HB368, which was the main bill containing most of the things the Land Use Task Force worked on last year. That’s just for one bill! (Admittedly it’s a biggie). I also understand the professional surveyors, who were the main writers and proponents of SB104, which sets out detailed new procedures for adjusting property lines between adjacent parcels/lots, held a training session on that bill for surveyors and engineers, and it went for two hours, and could easily have gone for three because of all the questions. Rob Terry at the Ombudsman’s Office is working to set up a session on just this bill for planners and local officials, coming up sometime soon.
And then there is SB179, which I’ve blogged about, which requires all cities and counties to provide in their land use ordinances a procedure for determining whether an unlisted commercial use is similar enough to be included, or a process for otherwise allowing it. The bill has legal and procedural flaws, agreed to by one of the main proponents of the bill, which we all agree will need to be fixed. And yet, the law stands and requires the inclusion of this process in local ordinances…
That’s just three bills I’ve mentioned here. There were 25 passed in this session.
I say again, what the heck are we doing? And more is coming? We’re going to be causing a breakdown in the whole system at this rate. Certainly there will be inconsistencies between communities (those who’ve been able to update their codes and procedures, and those who just can’t keep up).
On the update side, getting everyone up to speed on what to do, there’s discussion about getting more sessions schedules, likely about specific bills or topics. I know you all have plenty of time to spend on this (ha!), but what else you going to do?
Coming up, I’ll talk a little more about what else might be coming up! Oh boy!