WHAT HAPPENED: With the Senate filing deadline gone, it was all House bills (116 this week) coming out of the drafting office, while Senate proposals from prior weeks continued through the legislative process and included hot topics like abortion, CBD oil and, of direct interest to cities and towns, local tree ordinances.
WHAT IT MEANS: New House proposals may surface until April 16 (the deadline for public bills and resolutions not related to appropriations or finance) and April 23 (for those spending bills). As always, we're continuing to plug them into
our online bill tracker, allowing you to follow along. See coverage of the tree ordinance bill and others in this Bulletin.
ON TAP: Spring break. As reported by the Insider State Government News Service, both chambers are set to go on break (on slightly different schedules) this month. The publication, citing House Speaker Tim Moore, notes that the House has a loaded calendar in the first part of the upcoming week, and then nothing until April 24. In the Senate, leaders are gearing up for usual business through Thursday next week, and then taking off the week of April 22.
THE SKINNY: Talk of spring break doesn't mean the legislature isn't busy. On the contrary, there's a lot happening at this point in the session, and we're still moving toward budget drafts and a crucial deadline for legislation known as "crossover." Read on for highlights from this past week.
The Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday heard but did not vote on a complex piece of legislation that makes wide-ranging changes to land-use regulatory statutes. SB 355 Land-Use Regulatory Changes includes provisions that would incentivize development-related litigation at local taxpayer expense and weaken protections for neighboring property owners of new developments. In its current form, it is opposed by the League.
While intended to ease subdivision development, the committee heard from Bonner Gaylord, a lawyer for large Raleigh-based mixed-use developer Kane Realty, who said the legislation could slow the multi-million dollar mixed-use development projects that help drive the state’s economy in major metropolitan areas. That result is likely because, as currently written, the legislation would affect how conditional use zoning negotiations – designed to meet developer needs while protecting surrounding property owners – take place by subjecting cities to increased liability, and therefore, more potential litigation costs.
League Chief Legislative Counsel Erin Wynia told the committee that the collective effects of the entire bill would be to significantly tilt rights in favor of the developer over neighboring property owners. She asked committee members for more time so that changes to the bill could be considered.
While committee chairs initially indicated that the legislation would be considered again in a meeting on Wednesday, the bill was dropped from the calendar, a signal that changes may be coming.
A bill filed in the House this week would mandate a two-day turnaround time for local officials to review residential building plans submitted under the seal of an engineer or architect. If submitted by other persons and not under seal, the timeframe for completing the plan review would be five days. Cities that review residential building plans do so to ensure proper design, for compliance with safety and zoning codes. This provision was included in an omnibus building inspection bill,
HB 675 2019 Building Code Regulatory Reform, which includes numerous other measures that affect local building inspection processes:
- Directs creation of a standardized form to certify third-party inspections of various building components or elements;
- Prohibits cities from requiring developers to bury power lines under specifically-listed circumstances;
- Prohibits cities from requiring a minimum square footage for residential structures;
- Exempts temporary structures related to motion picture, television, and theater stage sets from building permitting processes;
- Extends until October 1, 2021 a requirement for cities to report instances where building inspectors find more than 15 building code violations in one inspection.
