A couple of days ago, a colleague sent me a message asking if I was aware that the LUDMA sections of the code, 10-9a and 17-27a, had been deleted and there were now new sections for LUDMA, 10-20 and 17-79? He also wondered what had been changed in these new sections of code?
I have to acknowledge that, while I was aware that this was happening, I did not worry about it too much and did not think it that significant. Given some of the questions I’ve been getting, I really should have at least posted an acknowledgement and helped make the planning community generally more aware of what was going on here.
If you’ve read my postings during and after recent legislative sessions, you’ll know that I have been somewhat critical of the fact that LUDMA just keeps growing and growing, and that it’s gotten to the point that for a local government staffer to understand all that is required and to be in compliance with has gotten to be a monumental task. Also, whereas the municipal and county LUDMAs were essentially the same for many years, they have grown more and more divergent, sometimes for good reason (more development-related provisions are justified in municipal code because that’s generally where the more sophisticated development occurs), but often changes were made in one of the codes, and a correlating change in the other code was just plain forgotten or overlooked.
Legislative staff earlier this year undertook a review of the LUDMA codes and determined that a comprehensive recodification of both was needed. Thus, in the October 6 special legislative session, bills were introduced to make that happen. There were really no substantive changes made to the land use provisions, there was just a lot of moving around, cleaning up, and reconciliation. For example, various sections of the LUDMA had their own set of definitions that applied to only those sections. Those were all moved into the general definitions section, which certainly seems more appropriate. And of course, there was a better reconciliation of the municipal and county codes, as appropriate (I’ve kind of used those words a lot here, sorry!)
Also, and I think this is a good move, many of the provisions that have been added to LUDMA in recent years regarding housing, have been taken out of LUDMA and put into their own new section of code.
I could give you the bill links here to take a look at to see what has happened, but really I think it will just do more good to go see what the code looks like now. I’ve given the links for the two new LUDMA sections up above, and here are the links for all the new housing-related stuff:
Chapter 21: Municipalities and Housing Supply, and Chapter 80: Counties and Housing Supply. In addition, there is a separate section in the counties code for Chapter 81 Agriculture, Industrial, and Critical Infrastructrure Materials Protection Areas.
It’s still a lot of stuff to deal with for local land use planning and regulation, but it’s somewhat easier to digest and deal with this way (my opinion!).