Not much to report today on the legislative front.  Some interesting insights came from the League’s Legislative Policy Committee meeting yesterday that are of interest.  Most notably, there is considerably back and forth going on between municipal representatives and House Majority Leader Mike Schultz over his HB151 – Retail Facility Incentive Payments Amendments bill, which on it’s face would pretty much prohibit any local financial incentives for retail developments.  The debating is around things like what kinds of projects to exempt, places to exempt, and so on and so on.  It will be interesting to see how this bill finally ends up.

There’s also a lot of discussion about the much-talked-about Station Area Planning bill going on in meetings.  Lots of municipal folks involved in this one.  Waiting for it to get the nod and come out.

There was discussion about some other behind-the-scenes things being talked about, including the idea that the state may create a land use authority (not as defined in LUDMA!) similar to MIDA, which could upon finding that there is a state need for certain land uses (like housing affordability) impose it’s own land use regulations in certain places, overriding local regulation.  It was mentioned as an idea prior to the legislative session.  As you might imagine, that concept was just blasted by local officials, but it doesn’t seem to have gone completely away.  That might be what’s in store for the bill file that Rep. Schultz has open titled Regional Development and Logistics Amendments.  I kind of don’t think there will be a serious effort for this, but stranger things have happened in the legislature over the years I’ve been watching it, so…

One kind of interesting bill that did pop out yesterday, HB343 – Water Supply Amendments, which deals mostly with how municipal water systems deal with providing water in areas outside their boundaries.  There’s language in there about how water may need to be supplied to approved subdivisions and how, and so on.  Take a look, it may affect what you do and how water may need to be considered in new development/subdivision proposals.