Jackson reps defend development fees to panel tasked with cutting red tape

A legislative panel charged with reducing regulations received pushback Thursday from advocates who don’t want the state to limit how local governments use rules and fees to mitigate the affordable housing crisis.

The Regulatory Reduction Task Force spent part of Thursday debating whether building and zoning regulations are stifling development and pushing up housing costs. At issue is whether such housing and development challenges are best addressed by local town and county governments or whether legislators in Cheyenne should step in to help reduce home prices.

Some towns and counties — Teton County and the Town of Jackson have drawn the most scrutiny — impose fees to offset a project’s impacts on infrastructure, services and even housing supply.

But those fees have to be justified, task force co-chair Sen. Mike Gierau (D-Jackson) said as the panel considered a Property development exactions bill that would limit development fees.

“We can’t pull numbers out of the air,” he said. “We want to make sure we [set fees] in a way that passes legal muster.”

Rep. Clark Stith (R-Rock Springs) repeated the allegation, voiced last year by Sen. Ogden Driskill (R-Devil’s Tower) that some local governments may be “ abusing local control ” by imposing fees unjustly. Some fees are not levied to mitigate impacts but rather “to pursue a low-growth or no-growth strategy,” Stith said Thursday.

But representatives from Teton County, where communities struggle to manage growth and solve affordable housing challenges, rejected Stith’s assertions.

“We have used our legally based housing mitigation program since 1995 as one tool to share the cost of affordable housing with developers and landowners who are creating jobs for employees who cannot afford to live in Jackson,” Jackson Town Manager Tyler Sinclair wrote the committee.

Town of Jackson lobbyist Andy Schwartz told the task force his community has hewed to U.S. Supreme Court decisions that limit fees to those that are directly attributable and proportional to a development’s impact. The town is not in the habit of “shaking down businesses,” he said.

“How does a community pay for [development] costs,” without the authority to set and levy fees, Schwartz asked the committee. “The developer has some level of responsibility,” according to court decisions, he told the panel.

Reduction or increase?

The task force will work on only three of the seven bills that were on its agenda Thursday — all drafted to reduce the cost of housing by revamping local zoning and development authority. The panel will focus its efforts on a measure to limit development fees, another to require governments to keep applicants updated on their projects’ reviews , and one to restrict who could protest zoning changes .

On the protest issue, the task force will consider three options with regard to the proportion of neighbors necessary to mount a challenge to a zoning adjustment. At its next meeting in October, it also will consider the building permit notice bill.

But task force members were hesitant about what Stith called “a cumbersome approach” and a “new regulatory burden” in that permit bill. Members are wary that the task force is adding, not reducing, red tape.

“It looks like we’re adding more things on the plate,” Sen. Wendy Schuler (R-Evanston) said.

The regulatory panel tabled a bill Thursday that would require towns larger than 4,000 residents to adopt several “ housing strategies ,” such as automatically allowing accessory housing units in some single family neighborhoods.

The task force left three bills for the Joint Corporations, Elections & Political Subdivisions Committee: Housing on government lands , Residential rental properties-applicability and City, town and county regulations .

“City, town and county regulations,” like the property development exactions bill, would limit development fees. It would prohibit towns larger than 4,000 residents from charging more than administrative costs for a building permit.

The Housing on public land bill would make affordable housing a priority on state land, a move that is arguably unconstitutional on school trust property, the deputy director of the Office of State Lands and Investments told the task force.

The corporations committee will meet later this month in Evanston.

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