A key piece of sprawl-reducing legislation was scheduled for signing by Governor Jennifer Granholm this month.
(Signed December 18, 2003 -Ed.)

MEC and PIRGIM worked with bill sponsor Rep. Chris Kolb (D-Ann Arbor) to get HB 4284 drafted and introduced. Also known as the Joint Municipal Planning Act, the bill provides local governments the power to create joint planning commissions. Its passage marks the first of the more than 150 recommendations of the Michigan Land Use Leadership Council to be made into law and is a major victory in the long struggle to curb costly urban sprawl.

Though not a complete solution in itself, joint planning provides a voluntary tool local governments may use to look at land use regionally-a first step toward protecting the overall character, economic base and environmental health. Joint Planning Commissions are legally binding, cooperative agreements between local governments by which they create a single joint planning body to oversee issues for the region, or a portion of a region in which they each have an interest, such as a business district or a greenway corridor.

"Planning regionally puts power back into the hands of local governments, because business and developers can no longer pit local governments against one another," says Brian Imus of PIRGIM. "The old way has created costly legal battles, annexations and poor development choices. Joint planning commissions allow governments to make fiscally sounds decisions and protect community character and identity."

Currently, Michigan's 1,800 entities with planning authority do not have the legal ability to work together. Counties, townships and cities are required to work under different and unique planning and zoning procedures. If they want to coordinate plans, they are required to translate those intentions into three separate plans, each with unique language and regulations-an unnecessary administrative burden.

"Planning across jurisdictional boundaries simply makes good economic and environmental sense," says Conan Smith, Land Programs Director at MEC. "It ensures that our communities make smart investments in road and sewer infrastructure and valuable land resources, and that transportation planning and school placement decisions compliment rather than contradict the plans made by neighboring governments."

HB 4284 also clarifies the rules about cooperative planning, formalizes the process of coordination and promotes regionally-common planning principles. Some of the simple innovations in the bill include allowing developers and planners from neighboring jurisdictions to work together to reduce unhealthy competition and unnecessary sprawl. It also allows the joint planning commission to choose from single planning statue to work under, whether it be county, township or city the commission can use the statue that best suits the project.

Next steps
For joint planning to be truly effective, legislation will also have to provide local governments incentives to plan regionally. MEC is researching an amendment to the Revenue Sharing Act that would allow units that coordinate land use and infrastructure plans to qualify for revenue sharing as a single unit with a higher revenue sharing calculation factor than they would receive by applying as individual units. Regions utilizing joint planning would thus do better in the revenue sharing distribution.