Colorado Alert: SB 213 Residential Land Use

In Eagle County, local municipalities are expressing concerns that while the bill has the stated goal to address the state's housing crisis, it will have the adverse effect, undermining the creative efforts and control of local towns and cities to address this crisis themselves...

The Colorado Municipal League - of which Avon, Vail, Eagle, Gypsum, Minturn and Red Cliff are all members municipalities - is opposing the bill in its entirety, calling it "the most sweeping attempt in recent Colorado history to remove local control and home rule authority from elected leaders, professional planning staff, and the people of Colorado."...

"The bill would alter over 100 years of municipal authority over land use and zoning in Colorado and place state agencies in charge of regulating and enforcing decisions currently made at the local level," he said. "It's a vote of no confidence in local government and in citizens in having a say in how they would like their own neighborhoods and communities to develop."...

The governor claims that the bill strengthens property rights, but the over 100-pages of new rules and bureaucracy looks more like a state government power grab. The fiscal note hasn't yet been released, but at minimum it will be $15 million annually redirected from general funds to yet more subsidized housing.

Here's a dozen ways that the SB 213 land use mandate is just more big government.

1. Creates state strategic growth rules, laws, and bureaucracy.
2. Removes local choice in exchange for state authority and rules.
3. Dictates minimum residential density limits under state authority.
4. Eliminates choices of a unit owners' association (HOAs).
5. Reduces transportation funding to non-compliant communities.
6. Minimum $15 million annual price tag to supply more government controlled, taxpayer subsidized housing.
7. Increases government interference in the housing market by requiring local governments to adopt and implement strategic affordable growth strategies.
8. Creates a new housing plans assistance fund on top of the multiple taxpayer funds already present.
9. Attempts to create government price controls by forcibly lowering property values through mandates.
10. Establishes a state model code for "inclusionary zoning" to require developments to have subsidized units, to be paid for by non-subsidized tenants or taxpayers.
11. The bill's goal to dramatically increase density doesn't account for our limited water capacity.
12. SB 213 abuses use of the "safety clause" which would prohibit any citizen referendum allowing voters to weigh-in on this issue.

The main reason the measure is being pushed through the legislature is because it provides a tool for state government to implement the required density under Proposition 123 (tax revenue dedicated to subsidized housing), but as has been well documented, density doesn't equate to affordable. Couple together the effects we're just beginning to see from passage of Prop 123 with the proposed House Bill 1190, which grants first dibs to government and caps prices in multi-unit property sales, there's no good reason to support SB 213 as written....