Two days left in the session, and things are moving along. Most of the “bad” bills don’t seem to be making any headway, so that’s a good thing.
Story in this morning’s DesNews about the major land use bills, and the housing affordability funding that’s moving through (I haven’t written much about this – others are following that closely). Katie McKellar, the story’s author, points out:
There have been some cases of upset local officials — take what happened with Summit County — a state lawmaker accused the county of violating state law for not adopting a housing and transit reinvestment zone at Kimball Junction. Also, the Utah League of Cities and Towns opposed a late-filed bill that would allow developers to create their own districts to finance infrastructure projects. For the most part, however, local leaders have supported efforts in a trio of what legislators have called “consensus bills” that are nearing final legislative approval before the session ends Friday at midnight.
The bills seek to help streamline and standardize regulations to help make development more “predictable” while balancing city needs. The legislation stemmed from months of work in the governor’s Unified Economic Opportunity Commission, which tasked a subcommittee with finding affordable housing solutions statewide.
Those are the major land use bills we’ve been following. Here’s a summary of where they are at.
SB174 – Local Land Use and Development Revisions – as anticipated, the bill was substituted yesterday and then passed by the House. The Senate concurred in the revisions this morning, so this bill is now done. Nothing really major in the new substitute, it did rework some of the language in the subdivision process sections. We’ll cover all of what these bills have done in our upcoming legislative recap sessions.
HB364 – Housing Affordability Amendments – I mentioned yesterday that the bill had been passed by the Senate but was then recalled for reconsideration. As anticipated, more amendments were apparently needed. The 6th substitute of the bill was passed by the Senate yesterday afternoon, and concurred to by the House this morning. The substitute again makes no major changes beyond what we have already described, mostly just rewording and some adjustments.
HB406 – LUDMA Modifications – this bill is still in the Senate Rules committee. A series of substitute bills have been released, none of which made any real major modifications, mostly just some moderate changes. There is now a 5th substitute awaiting action when this bill gets on the Senate floor.
Other bills of interest:
SB199 – Local Land Use Amendments – this is the land use referenda bill described earlier. Yesterday on the House floor an amendment was passed to the bill which changed the local governing body vote standard from two-thirds to unanimous. The bill was then passed by the House, and concurred to by the Senate this morning. This bill had some significant pushback.
That’s one bill (Sen.)Fillmore (not the bill’s sponsor) said he didn’t support because he thought it was “unconstitutional and tilted too far away from public involvement, where I’m trying to strike a balance.”
There’s lots more in the DesNews story on perspectives from all sides on what’s happening this year on housing and land use. Give it a read, it’s worth it.
Upcoming in a future post, I’ll tell you what’s happening right now in some other states on these same issues. It’s quite eye-opening when you put it in the context of what’s been happening here.