Monday, January 30, 2006

The Good, the Bad, and the UGLY

I received an email this morning from one of our gentle readers providing a preliminary rundown on a few of the RDA/property rights bills that will be coming up on the 2006 Utah Legislative agenda. I'll incorporate the text from this email in full:
---------Good Bills this 2006 legislative session---------

Note: Wow! There are some very aggressive land use bills on the capital this go around. This should be a very very interesting legislative session. According to Craig call, there is some real hostility towards lobbyist on the capital this go around and the land use bills are plentiful.

Local Government Land Use and Impact Fee Revisions -- Mansell, L. A. SB 170

This bill is a bombshell to municipal land control. The professional land planners are trying to kill this bill and have named it the "let em sprawl bill" and is anti Gov. Huntsman's Envision Utah goals. It prohibits counties and municipalities from imposing stricter land use requirements or higher land use standards than required under statute. Today cities can take your freedom and pass any ordinance "more restrictive" than the state code. This bill clips the cities wings in effect. It also says the city must "protect property rights." What a radical concept.

"Local Government Land Use and Impact Fee Revisions"".

Bramble's Redevelopment overhaul looks like two different bills. No text yet. Just named. SB 0196 and SB 0245.

"Resolution Restricting Use of Eminent Domain" -- Dougall, J. HJR 029 -- No text.

"Eminent Domain Amendments" -- Stephenson, H. SB 0117 -- Requires vote by whole council and not just the mayor. And notification to affected property owners before the decision to use eminent domain.

"Limitation on Municipalities" -- Harper, W. HB 423 -- No text yet.

------------Bad Bill-----------

"Property Law Amendments" -- Jenkins, S. -- SB 0210. No text yet. This bill may expand the use of eminent domain to stop little old ladies from buying property to stop a city project.
This latter bill, which could be legitimately titled the "Closing the Barn Door After the Horses Have Escaped" bill is no doubt the result of the efforts of the Ogden City Administration's paid lobbyist, Mr. Jolley, to prevent one of our local citizen activists from raising any more hell with the Wal-Mart Superstore project, should the Ogden RDA ever miraculously (i.e., by divine intervention) have the condemnation power restored by the legislature.

As you will recall, it was our own Dorothy Littrell, retired CPA and frequent contributor to this blog, who garnered national attention, when she took on the neoCONS at Ogden City Hall and Uber-Corporate Land-grabber Wal-Mart and won:
Ogden, UT -- Fighting the world's largest retailer is an unenviable task. But a core group of concerned citizens in Ogden, Utah, led by 76-year-old retiree Dorothy Littrell, did just that--and won. In an act of both legal significance and brash defiance, Dorothy even purchased a parcel of property in the middle of Wal-Mart's proposed development, after the company's plans were revealed. Together with filing a pro se lawsuit, the group staged rallies, using materials provided by the Castle Coalition, wrote letters to the editor and exerted a vast amount of political pressure through the media and state legislature. In early 2005, a little over a year after the big-box was announced, the group's activism ultimately culminated in an eminent domain reform bill that was signed by the governor, effectively stopping the development and saving a neighborhood. Yet another victory against seemingly insurmountable odds. Castle Coalition

I spoke briefly with Ms. Littrell this morning by phone, and asked how it feels to have the local government's arrogance and hubris directed toward her through a Senate bill drafted specifically to strip away her civil rights with respect to the downtown parcel of property that she owns.

"I just want you to know that I have arrived. It is my own Senator from Weber County who is going after little old ladies to keep us at home and from buying property to stop the big bad government. I think this is a hoot," she said.

If you ever get a chance to meet her in person -- "little old lady" WON'T be a description that leaps to mind. the lady has fire; and she doesn't take crap from ANYONE.

Property owners of Ogden owe Dorothy Littrell a debt of gratitude for putting her money where her mouth was during our successful 2005 pro-property rights fight.

If any of our gentle readers who care about private property rights would care to deliver a few choice (but gentle) comments to the obviously-misguided Senator Jenkins, I'm inserting his email address here: sjenkins@utahsenate.org

The floor is now open for discussion.

13 comments:

ARCritic said...

Interesting take on SB170. While I don't doubt that many planners and government officials have trounced peoples personal property rights unjustly, I would suggest that this bill probably goes way beyond what most of even you libertarians would want.

It seems to give local official very little ability to regulate how people use their land.

While the proponents say they had "some input" into the drafting of the bill, opponents claim that it was in fact drafted by the law firm representing a number of the biggest developers in the state.

If this passes, and you own developable land, you better hope and pray that you are the first to develope cause you will have no real way to stop what goes in next door.

Take for example the Centerville Walmart. Had this been in place Walmart would have been able to build just about what ever they wanted on the land they had access to and Centerville would not have been able to get any consession to mitigate the impact.

Another thing this bill does is take away the peoples right to recall a zoning or land use decision. So the fight in Sandy over the Walmart would have never happened. The people could not have even attempted to have a vote of the citizens on it.

I will reserve my comments on Jenkin's bill until I see some text.

RudiZink said...

The less government regulation the better, from a libertarian, natural rights viewpoint, ARCritic.

From my own perspective, I think it would be better for Ogden City if we abandoned zoning and planning ALMOST altogether.

That's not to say we should allow slaughterhouses to build next to schoolhouses; but we've gone way overboard when we take public safety.nuisance concepts to the logical extremes like ticketing for long grass and dry lawns.

The Downtown would build up fast if Ogden City would just can all the planners and put them to work scooping up pigeon-doo.

What's it gonna take for urban planners, who earn friggin' college degrees in screwing up the free market these days, to realize they've led us down THE WRONG CENTRAL PLANNING PATH?

Urban planners owe their career paths to guys like Joseph Stalin.

Sheesh!

Anonymous said...

You recommend virtually no zoning?

No, Rudi.

That's throwing the baby out with the bath water and would be as wrong for Ogden as over-regulation and/or bad zoning. No zoning makes buying any residential property iffy since you can never be sure the house next door won't some day become a 7-11.

The city over-reached in the Wal-Mart land aquisition try under eminent domain and, thanks to Ms. Dorothy, this city's power to use ED to condemn land for the benefit of other private users was severely [and properly] restricted by the legislature. But to extend that necessary victory to the point of giving developers free rein to do whatever they please on urban properties would be very unwise.

Anonymous said...

Mansell's bill SB170 would be like turning the keys to the hen house over to the wolfs! What developer has ever shown concern for the citizens of the cities that they set their sights on? All of them have only one motive and that is making as much money as they can out of communities they operate in.

While Mr. Huntsman's reasons for backing this bill are all valid, there is still a very big and dangerous threat hanging over every property owner's head with this developer sponsered bill.

Who would you rather have making decisions over land use - city councilpersons who can be replaced (like in Ogden recently), or rich and greedy developers that are responsible to no one but mammon?. They only swoop into communities to strip all the cash they can, then they vanish only to go on and rape the next community.

There was a political sea change in Davis county last November with 5 or 6 mayors losing their jobs to new comers who vowed to stand up to the all powerfull developers that are systematically devastating that county. Farmington was a case in point. The new mayor replaced the old, and fairly popular mayor, because the people percieved, correctly so, that the old guy was way to cozy and accomodating to the fat cat developers. The citizens wanted protection from predatory developers! The citizens wanted to have as much say in how that town builds out as the developers have!!

This bill would be great to stop the evil powers of groups like the Godfreyites, however this would be devastating to small and rural communites that do not have immoral local leadership.

Ogden and its recent leadership is an anomaly. This bill is way to draconian a way to solve a problem that is best left to the ballot box.

Anonymous said...

No Zoning = Total chaos.

ARCritic said...

You can check out Utah Planners Corner blog on the front page of this blog for lots of articles from a planner about SB170. And there are of course some posts on the Utah League of Cities and Towns site at www.ulct.org.

From stuff I have read (can't find links now), it was drafted by the law firm that represents Anderson Development, Ivory Homes, and some other big developers. It is also the employer of Speaker Curtis.

Steve, while I believe that some cities have abused zoning and land use regulation to unjustly deprive people of uses of their land that should not have been done. I also believe that cities have justly deprived people of uses of their land.

This bill was the sledgehammer approach to killing an ant. Not exactly (probably not nearly close in some peoples mind) the same as the RDA bill last year but similar.

I think if you look deeper into the bill you could probably find things that could be at least a little frightening even to you.

Anonymous said...

SB 170 currently under revision.

State Sen. Al Mansell says he never really intended to pursue sweeping legislation that critics called a bald attack on local governments' land-use planning.
    The 80-page bill drafted by developers, SB170, was meant to get Utah cities' attention. Now that Mansell has it, he says he will revise or replace the original draft - parts he acknowledges were "way over the top."


Developers call off the attack

Anonymous said...

Does anyone here remember a place called "Mansell & Associates?" Good old Al's a realtor/developer first. What's the mystery?

ARCritic said...

Well it is really unfortunate that Mansell feels he needs to use a cattle prod to get the attention of the cities. There was a fairly major rewrite of land use law last year. It was a collabrative effort where everyone made fairly significant compromises to get a lot accomplished. And there was supposedly agreement that it was such a significant change that the law should be left alone except for on issue that was going to be addressed during the next interim.

At least that was what the cities, towns, planners, enviornmentalists and everyone else at the table except a few very powerful developers.

I don't think this is the way to start an honest and open negotiation process. While everyone will probably come to the table, I think many are not going to be in a mood to be very accomidating.

One "over the top" provision, was that the law would have made it a class B misdemeanor to violate those sections of the code. There are not a lot of other places where public servents are threatened with jail for doing their job even if they mistakenly apply the law.

ARCritic said...

Steve,
You still supportive of SB170 when even the sponsor says some things were "over the top"?

Would you think highly of a fellow councilmember who came in with an "over the top" ordinance restricting property rights to shock you into negotiating away more of your rights?

Reminds me of the 138% property tax increase proposed in Davis county a few years back that was so overwhelmingly opposed and then fairly quietly accepted when it was scaled back to ONLY 24% increase.

Anonymous said...

Scott Jenkins has sponsored another bad, very ugly bill: SB229, Civil Service Commissions. This bill must have originated in Godfrey's office, because it allows a city to dissolve the Civil Service Commission. The Civil Service Commission services Police and Fire Departments. It's bad for our firefighters and policemen because they would not have a neutral, impartial Hearings Board for grievances and other concerns. They would have to deal directly with Godfrey with all their issues. Do you think that they'd get a fair, impartial hearing?

I'm urging everyone to check the bill out at the Legislature's web page, and if you concur with me, please let all the Legislators you know that you'd like them to vote against SB229.

Our firefighters and policemen put their lives on the line every day for us; here's our chance to show them that we appreciate them. Let's throw our support behind our firefighters and policemen and have SB229 killed.

ARCritic said...

So did anyone hear about the people in Pleasant Grove who are mad that UDOT has decided not to use eminant domain to take the trailer park they live in? They were all hoping that UDOT would decide to widen the highway on their side so they could get out of their rundown trailers. UDOT decided against using eminant domain to the chargin of the property owners.

Anonymous said...

It looks like Mayor Godfrey has something on Senator Scott Jenkins, or he's promised him something so big that he doesn't mind committing political suicide by sponsoring SB210, The Property Law Amendment, and SB229, Civil Service Commission bills, straight out of the Mayor's Office. Mark Johnson told the Council the other night that he had written SB229. (The Mayor's "get-even" effort to the firefighters for backing the four council members who were against him, and were elected!) What a sore loser!

When SB229 comes out of committee, be sure to contact your legislators and tell them that it is a terrible bill and needs to die NOW. We won't have any firemen in Ogden, if it passes, because without the Civil Service Commission, they become "at will" employees like everyone else who works for the city and walks on egg shells so as not to upset the child Mayor, who has to have his way on everything! Since they've already committed the grievous crime of backing the new council members, they'll be gone before you can say, "Jack Robinson." Our firefighters protect you and me, night and day, 365 days a year, so let's support them and help them keep their protection from the Mayor's anger. CALL YOUR LEGISLATORS, AND TELL THEM TO KILL BILL SB229!

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