HB 360: Land Use Amendments

My fellow legislators and I spend 45 days every year trying to adjust the swing of the pendulum of law.  It swings back and forth between justice and injustice, rights and wrongs, good and bad, constitutional and unconstitutional. We struggle with trying to determine the difference and balance between the public good and individual rights. I have to admit that my interest and my attitude comes down significantly in the balance on behalf of individual rights because without individual rights there is no public good anyway.

Supreme Court Justice George Sutherland said:

“We must recognize that property rights are essential to human liberty. The individual… has three great rights, equally sacred from arbitrary interference: the right to his life, the right to his liberty, and the right to his property. The three rights are so bound together as to be essentially one right. To give a man his life, but deny him his liberty, is to take from him all that makes life worth living. To give him liberty, but take from him the property which is the fruit and badge of his liberty, is to still leave him a slave.”

This statement is important and I’m going to tell you why it relates to my bill, HB 360: Land Use Amendments. The Legislature made a decision years ago that I think allowed the pendulum to swing a little too far. This bill doesn’t change that. What it does is make a slight change in having people realize the decisions they make affect people’s individual rights. A number of years ago, the Legislature allowed a rule in our land use planning to say that a city or a county could make a more restrictive, higher standard in their planning and zoning code than the state law allows. What that has done has created a situation where no one pays any attention to the state code. There is a free for all out there and individuals in certain areas of the state in certain circumstances are being subjected to a lot more onerous and abusive laws that control their individual rights to property.

The bill is simple. Currently in state law, when a municipality or county makes a land use revision or change in ordinance, they have to identify it by a public notice and hearing. You and I or anyone else can attend. Unfortunately, unless it is a significant thing, we don’t pay much attention. However, those who are making the decisions and proposals have a responsibility to at least know what the state law is and give notice that perhaps this new ordinance that they are adopting is a higher standard or more restrictive than what we in the Legislature have decided to impose in land use planning. They are political subdivisions of the state of Utah and we have that responsibility to guide this process.

The bill adds the following language to the Utah code regarding municipalities and counties giving public notice for proposed changes:

“if the proposed land use ordinance enacts stricter requirements or higher standards

than are required by this chapter, notice of the stricter requirements or higher standards and a citation to the applicable provision of this chapter”

It is my hope that this will cause those proposing changes to know the state law, and understand that they are making more restrictive requirements. Perhaps I might not live enough to see that pendulum swing back to individual rights, but I know that this is a step in that direction.

You can read the bill and see its current status here:

http://le.utah.gov/~2016/bills/static/HB0360.html

You can listen to my committee presentation here:

http://utahlegislature.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=33&clip_id=19976