Environmentalists
Applaud Key Land Use Legislation
Joint Planning Bill Helps Communities, Slows Sprawl
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For
Immediate Release:
July 18, 2003
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Contacts:
Conan
Smith, MEC 517-487-9539
Brian Imus, PIRGIM 734-717-6597
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LANSING-The
State Legislature took a concrete step to curb sprawl and
encourage more regional solutions to land use problems yesterday
by passing a bill that provides local governments the power
to create joint planning commissions. According to the Michigan
Environmental Council (MEC), House Bill 4284 is landmark legislation
that will help communities protect Michigan's fast-changing
landscape from becoming overtaken by poorly planned development.
Michigan's
more than 1500 individual units of government do not have
the legal ability to come together to address land use concerns
of regional significance. Joint planning is a voluntary tool
local governments may use in order to create legally binding
plans that allow them to manage the growth of their community
while protecting the region's character and economic base.
"In
the interest of Michigan's land and economic security, legislative
leaders like Rep. Chris Kolb have stepped up and provided
local communities the tools they need to take control of development,"
says Conan Smith, Land Programs Director at the Michigan Environmental
Council. "This is really good neighbor legislation. Planning
across jurisdictional boundaries ensures that a community's
costly investments in road and sewer infrastructure, permanent
conversions of land resources, and transportation planning
and school placement compliment rather than contradict plans
made by neighboring governments."
Under
current law, counties, townships, and cities are each required
to use different planning procedures, so working together
means translating ideas into three separate ordinances, each
with unique language and regulations-a discouragingly resource-intensive
proposition. Passage of House Bill 4284 allows one planning
commission covering multiple jurisdictions to work with one
set of rules.
"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 the Public
Interest Research Group in Michigan. "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."
A copy
of MEC's testimony on the bill is available at http://www.mecprotects.org
