Cottonwood Heights Republican Sen. Kirk Cullimore Jr.’s Senate Bill 337 would create the Beehive Development Agency.
“Very similar to what we see with MIDA, The Point and Inland Port [Authority]. This is even more constrained,” Cullimore said in committee March 3. “The process is more constrained than what we see with some of these other development authorities.”
The Beehive Development Agency would have a five-member board: three appointed by the governor, one from the Senate president and one chosen by the House speaker.
It would pursue what Cullimore calls “significant community impact projects,” or SCIPs.
“That could be a wide variety of things,” the sponsor said. “It could be potentially a nuclear plant. It could be large manufacturing, or it could be really grand-scale, mixed-use developments.”
The bill allows for a coordinating council that would recommend the SCIPs, which Cullimore said would be aimed at benefiting all of Utah.
According to Cullimore, that council would include the Utah governor, House speaker, Senate president, Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity director, plus representatives from the Military Installation Development Authority, Inland Port Authority, Point of the Mountain State Land Authority, State Fair Park Authority, state lands trust agency, the League of Cities and Towns and the Utah Association of Counties.
The bill’s draft did not require the consent of local governments for SCIPs. The Salt Lake Tribune reports the March 3 revision does factor in local input.
Park City Manager Matt Dias says SB337, which dropped last Wednesday, was part of what prompted an emergency city meeting.
“There hasn't been too much, kind of, crazy going on until now, and that just happened yesterday. We had our first emergency legislative policy committee meeting in probably 11 or 12 years,” he said Feb. 27. “And that's just a result of the bills that dropped yesterday.”
According to Summit County Deputy Civil Attorney David Thomas, the Beehive Development Agency can start three projects per year.
“We had been told this bill was potentially coming, and now it is here. It would take away local control, and if passed, then we would have kind of a ‘super planning commission’ in the state,” Thomas told the county council Feb. 26 before the March 3 revision. “And that may or may not be a good thing.”
The Senate Economic Development and Workforce Services Committee recommended SB337 3-2 March 3. It heads to the full Senate for a vote.
The legislative session ends Friday, March 7.
