CHEYENNE - After watching a certain amount of legislative action on the large-acre subdivision reform bill, one stops counting all the ironies. But a few of the richer ones still linger a week after the 59th Legislature sent the final draft to the governor.

   Such as, it took a debate over cutting up land into ranchettes and hobby farms to bring land stewardship interests together.

   Or, that the same bill that took away subdivision developers’ favorite exemption from county permitting, also created a limited new exemption from county permitting.

   Or, that the greatest beneficiaries of this political showdown over roads, sewers, boundaries, surveys and permits, will be … wildlife.

   Yet, what the Legislature did last week was very good indeed, and historic, one hopes, a start down a path that leads to a Wyoming where rural residential development reflects and sustains our values and conserves our resources.

   Legislators like to solve problems, to write laws that clear up people’s troubles. Perhaps the biggest irony in this debate is that it took the mistakes of past lawmakers to make a problem worth the solving.

   Governments regulate subdivisions because smaller parcels of land mean more owners, with more houses, more cars, more electrical appliances, more toilets to flush, more neighborhoods to patrol. If something like that is going to pop up on the edge of town, local governments need to know, and to have some say in what it will look like, how big it will be, and who will pay for the services.

   That was the entirely sensible view of the 1975 Legislature, but then came the exemptions.

   Transferring property to family members outside the regulatory process was just one of those loopholes --- one that took the Legislature and its Joint Corporations Committee a couple of years to rewrite and clear away the abuses, returning it to its intended purpose.

   That looked easy compared to taking on the biggest loophole of them all – the 35-acre exemption. Past legislators apparently figured these “large” lots were nothing county commissioners needed to worry about. Besides, how many people are going to come out to Wyoming and live on 40 acres outside of town?

 Photo Credit: Liz Storer, Storer Communications

 

   A lot, it turns out. North of Casper, north of Cheyenne, south of Cody, south of Jackson, and anyplace pretty in between, the 40-acre ranchette or hobby farm is multiplying, eliminating wildlife habitat more permanently than any oil and gas boom, filling up bit by bit our open spaces and uncluttered horizons. The definition of “small” has changed over the years.

   People do want to live out there with a horse and a view. Developers want to sell them the land, and local governments generally want their communities to grow. The final compromise bill certainly satisfies those goals. Landowners get one last shot at less-regulated subdivision – carving up to ten 10-acre portions off larger parcels in the years to come. But they’ll have to go to the courthouse to certify they’re eligible for the last loophole and tell the county what they’re up to.

   Otherwise, if you want to divide an old ranch up into quarter-sections-of-quarter-sections with people living on each one, you are probably going to have to demonstrate to local officialdom in some specific ways that your plans fit the land and fit the community’s standards.

   Senate File 11 alone won’t get us all the way to a well-planned, smart-growth future for the state. Not everybody in Wyoming who cares about the environment even wants that. The debate certainly did create common ground for the conservation lobby, the state’s agricultural interests, and local governments. People who want to save open space outside our cities and towns could come from any of those three camps. Though their mutual interests played out as a coincidence rather than as part of a pre-hatched plan, these three influential lobbies could be a powerful alliance in future debates over land use.

   The bill itself came out rather subdued, too. The 10-acre-parcel cutout loophole was an excessively generous gesture from legislative leaders eager to quell the property-rights arguments against the bill and get it passed intact. The final compromise bill also prevents counties from regulating aspects of development not spelled out in the bill---legislators generally dislike being told they gave people powers they never dreamt of. And of course, the right to regulate subdivisions with lots of 35 to 140 acres is still up to individual counties to enact. Many will find that a politically tough choice to make.

   But til now, we had been cruising toward sprawl, busted septic systems, fenced-up habitat, and cut-off migration corridors. County governments can just about reach the brake pedal now, if they choose to.