Wednesday, July 9th, 2008...7:32 am
It’s a Twenty Four Hour Fight
I haven’t been good about posting the last few days. Hey, I get to have an off week.
So, this means I haven’t given our Governor proper credit for one of her vetoes the other day. On Monday, Janet Napolitano vetoed SB 1406, which would have made it more difficult for localities to impose impact fees on developers.
The developers have been arguing that some cities abuse impact fees by using them to pay for projects without having to raise taxes. They are right to be opposed to such a thing, since it moves the burden for city-wide projects to new homeowners and turns the whole reason for impact fees on its head. However, the developer community has opposed targeting restrictions to such activity and instead want to make it near impossible for localities to impose the fees at all.
Other bills vetoed on Monday included a bill that allowed people without a concealed carry permit to conceal weapons in their cars, a bill that would have made homeowners associations even less democratic, a bill that would have diverted sales tax to a select number of cities and a bill that would have changed the definition of an open sidearm to include many concealed weapons.
I have to be nice to Janet, she reads this blog.
6 Comments
July 9th, 2008 at 7:46 am
I can’t say much about how impact fees are used. But maybe we need to consider a sprawl fee. New homes that sprawl out into the desert pay a fee, and that fee must be used ONLY to help encourage high-density, family-friendly construction in urban cores.
Dense urban areas create fewer carbon emissions, improves energy efficiency, encourages creative new businesses interactions and supports the arts.
OK, all you pro-sprawl readers of the R-Cube. Go ahead, let’s hear the screams and gnashing of teeth about that idea!
July 9th, 2008 at 10:41 am
I’d reframe the message as: Developers pay for ALL incremental costs of projects outside the urban core, not the taxpayers! They’ll pass those costs onto the buyers, who SHOULD be paying for the FULL costs to society. ANY incremental cost is fair game, including such things as healthcare costs for Ozone toxicity.
July 9th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Even though I disagree with her vetoes of most gun bills (really nutty ones like the guns-in-bars bill and the storage locker bill excepted) I have to say that Janet is right on top of things in keeping our legislature from imposing their version of sharia on the rest of us.
I of course hope for an Obama presidency, but the only thing that worries me about one is that if Janet leaves for a cabinet post (or even veep) then we’d be stuck with Jan Brewer, and she’d actually sign some of the crazy crap that comes out of the legislature. The antidote of course is to work to make sure that Democrats will control at least one house of the legislature next year.
July 9th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Arizona is one of the few states I have lived that doesn’t have builders incur the entire cost of expansion of roads, schools, police & fire, and as noted above by Steve, the cost goes to the buyers who are the ones using the new stuff anyway.
I don’t understand why Arizonans has such a hard time wrapping their brains around this one. I’m not the only one here from the midwest.
July 10th, 2008 at 10:44 am
Bridget:
Actually, it’s not the roads, fire, schools, etc. that I’m the most concerned about. IMO, when a builder creates a new subdivision then (s)he should obtain a new source of water equal to the incoming population.
Of course with the foreclosure crisis, I suspect it will be a few years before the builders are out creating megadevelopments anymore, and if we’re smart we will use the intervening down time to plan better and where necessary pass new regulations to help control and manage the growth better when and if they do resume.
July 11th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Nobody reads my blog. (sniff!)