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Do state legislators single out Summit County? Local officials believe they do

It’s the last week of the legislative session, and it’s been a stressful one for Summit County. Multiple bills have highlighted the fraught relationship between the county and state lawmakers.

The current state legislative session, which ends Friday, has produced multiple bills which local leaders say single out Summit County, either for punishment or to keep it from getting benefits.

The powder keg has been Senate Bill 84, which could give Dakota Pacific the right to build its mixed-use housing development in Kimball Junction without county approval.

County Council Chair Roger Armstrong said at the council’s meeting last week that some state legislators say the county is a bad actor. He asked people down in the valley how Summit County was being portrayed in the statehouse.

“The answer that came back was, ‘It's nonspecific. You're just being portrayed as doing bad things out there.’” Armstrong said. “And that there's no choice but for the legislature to correct it.”

He mentioned one specific narrative circling the statehouse: the idea that the county is against building more housing.

Summit County already has multiple affordable housing projects that consist entirely of affordable units. Although, that’s an increasingly tough business prospect as land and construction costs skyrocket.

It’s no secret the lack of affordable housing is a crisis. Fewer than 15% of Park City employees live within city limits. Mountainlands Community Housing Trust estimates that about 8,000 workers commute from outside Summit County to work in Park City daily.

In winter, Park City imports a tenth of its workers from outside the United States—foreign students on J-1 visas.

And there’s still a labor shortage, and the need for workers and housing is only growing. Mountainlands says that just to maintain that 15% number, about 1,000 new housing units are needed over the next five years.

State lawmakers cite this crisis when they discuss SB84. On the Utah House and Senate floors, lawmakers say the bill is about Summit County doing its part to meet housing needs. Here’s Sen. Kirk Cullimore, R-Sandy.

“This bill simply allows the state a way to cure when we have sub-political entities that are not that are not participating in the programs and furthering the policies of the state,” Cullimore said.

Dakota Pacific executives told the county council last week its lobbyists communicated with the state officials who drafted language in SB84, and they echoed legislators’ assertions that Summit County needs to help solve the statewide housing crisis.

In response, county councilors say the legislature is trying to force a one-size-fits-all approach to the housing crisis onto Summit County—but the county is an extreme demographic outlier in Utah, so what may work elsewhere won’t work here.

Councilmember Chris Robinson doubts that Dakota Pacific’s project would help solve the issue, highlighting that market rate units in the proposal will still be out of reach for workers because the local market is so expensive.

“Whereas in other parts of the state, if you increase supply that may make it more affordable, more within reach,” Robinson said.

Armstrong said last week that those who could afford market rate units in Dakota Pacific's development would just increase the need for more services and workers to meet their needs.

But this is just one disagreement of many, and state legislators have drafted other bills that single out Summit County in different ways.

Senate Bill 175 would help rural counties—specifically, third- through sixth-class counties—fund infrastructure projects and maintain roads. Summit County is a third-class county, but it would be the only one ineligible for funds appropriated by the bill.

Deputy County Manager Janna Young said the county was written out of the bill on purpose.

“I guess there's some heartburn among a lot of legislators for spending state money on county roads to begin with. And yet they could justify it for what they're calling the poor, more rural counties,” Young said last week. “Well, they didn't feel like Summit County was a poor rural county and so didn't feel like we needed this new money.”

And then there’s House Bill 364, which essentially supplements SB84. It too establishes penalties for not complying with moderate income housing laws and could solidify Dakota Pacific’s right to develop without county approval.

The flurry of bills begs the question of why the county and state clash. The animus goes back farther than just this legislative session.

Robinson said he believes there’s a bad aftertaste in state lawmakers’ mouths from the Hideout controversy, when a bill opened up a loophole that allowed Hideout to attempt to annex county land without the county’s knowledge.

“We've stood our ground and defended ourselves,” Robinson said. 

Robinson said the Hideout and Dakota Pacific controversies follow similar playbooks.

“A similar kind of thing,” he said. “Seek power from the legislature to do what landowners or developers wanted.”

Summit County took Hideout to court and has prevailed so far. The Utah Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments in Hideout’s appeal Monday.

In the case of Dakota Pacific, Robinson says Summit County is an easy target if state lawmakers want to weaponize issues like affordable housing.

“There’s the old saying, ‘Let no crisis go to waste,’” he said.

Summit County and the state both struggle against the tide of economic forces when it comes to creating affordable housing. And the county would like to solve problems like the housing issue in its own way.

If this state legislative session is any indication, Utah lawmakers aren’t keen on allowing Summit County to have that independence.

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