‘Power grab?' Despite cross-party outcry, bill to create mighty new state agency moves forward

Yahoo

04-03-2025

Snow falls at the Capitol in Salt Lake City on Friday, Dec. 13, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)
The opposition was striking. Conservative and progressive groups alike fought it fiercely. Even a Republican lawmaker resisted it.
Still, a newly unveiled bill that would create a powerful new state body called the Beehive Development Agency survived its first legislative hurdle on Monday. The Senate Economic Development and Workforce Services Committee narrowly voted 3-2 to advance it to the Senate floor.
Despite the fervor against it, SB337 also has heavyweight support. It's being pushed by Gov. Spencer Cox's office, and was supported by top Republican legislative leadership, including Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton. It's envisioned as a way to coordinate economic development — as well as housing incentives — for projects of statewide importance.
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'Utah needs to enhance its ability to respond quickly and efficiently to significant economic development opportunities,' the bill's sponsor, Senate Majority Leader Kirk Cullimore, R-Sandy. 'That could be a wide variety of things. It could be potentially a nuclear plant. It could be large manufacturing. Or it could be really grand scale, mixed-use developments.'
It wouldn't be for a regular development — 'not a new subdivision and a Walmart,' Cullimore said, 'but things that have large, significant impact on the state of Utah.'
He pointed to a slate of new tools Utah lawmakers have passed in recent years meant to encourage cities and developers to build more affordable single-family homes, but also expressed a need for the state to 'consolidate all of these efforts.'
'Primarily that's what this is doing, is looking at the various things that we've done in the state of Utah over the last couple of years to boost economic development, boost housing opportunities, and really we need somebody that can come in and coordinate all of these efforts,' Cullimore said.
Under SB337, the Governor's Office of Economic Opportunity would have a new tool called the Beehive Development Agency, which would be an 'independent nonprofit' that would have ultimate planning power with broad bonding, land use and taxing authority. It's meant to accomplish 'statewide strategic objectives' by facilitating and streamlining 'significant community impact project areas.'
Cullimore said a 'key thing' that he removed from the original version of the bill was 'local preemption,' or measures to usurp local control over development decisions.
'That's completely removed,' he said.
Even though he acknowledged the bill was unveiled with less than nine days to go until the conclusion of the 2025 session, Cullimore said it's been 'worked on for a while,' with the governor's office and other stakeholders, 'and it's gone through a lot of iterations.'
A previous version of the bill would have totally preempted cities and counties' local control by allowing the Beehive Development Agency to 'designate up to three significant community impact project areas' in a city each year — regardless of consent from local officials.
Last week, Cullimore told reporters that provision of the bill was 'subject to a lot of negotiations,' and over the weekend he worked with groups including the Utah League of Cities and Towns and the Utah Association of Counties to address their concerns.
What resulted was the new version Cullimore proposed in Monday's committee, which would require a city or county council to 'consent or not consent to inclusion' in one of the Beehive Development Agencies' 'significant community impact plans' within 45 days of the agency's commissioner proposing a draft plan.
If they consent, SB337 specifies that decision would be 'irrevocable.'
The bill would also require the Beehive Development Agency's commissioner to coordinate with a list of other powerful, previously created agencies (many of them controversial) that also have broad land, bonding and taxing use authority, including:
The Military Installation Development Authority, also known as MIDA, which was created in 2007 to work with the military, private businesses and local governments to promote economic development. It's responsible for developing the Falcon Hill Aerospace Research Park at Hill Air Force Base, and a project area in Wasatch County that includes Mayflower Mountain Resort, a new ski resort near Deer Valley.
The Utah Inland Port Authority, which the Utah Legislature created in 2018 under a cloud of scandal after Salt Lake City officials decried lawmakers for usurping local authority. Environmental groups continue to litigate its constitutionality, while state officials defend it as a tool to develop logistics hubs across the state to maximize Utah's import and export industries.
The Point of the Mountain State Land Authority, a board tasked with overseeing the development of 600 acres of prime real estate at the site of the former Utah State Prison in Draper, now known as The Point.
The Utah Lake Authority, a body to manage development in and around Utah Lake.
The State Fair Park Authority, tasked with managing the existing Utah State Fairpark.
The Utah Fairpark Area Investment and Restoration District, which has taxing, bonding and land use authority to facilitate development of a Major League Baseball stadium in and around Salt Lake City's Fairpark neighborhood.
The Beehive Development Agency would become the mother of all development authorities — or 'the one authority to rule them all,' as The Salt Lake Tribune put it when it first reported on Cullimore's bill.
Sen. John Johnson, R-North Ogden, was reluctant to support the bill.
'I think I have a major problem when government kind of takes over,' he said. While Cullimore said the new version of the bill doesn't preempt local governments, Johnson questioned how creating a new state agency 'actually gets government out of the way.'
Cullimore said it's more about 'consolidating' government to better 'coordinate all of these efforts and bring this together so we don't have one group over here working on something, and then maybe the appropriate tools over here, and nobody's actually putting those things together.'
Ryan Starks, executive director of the Governor' Office of Economic Opportunity, spoke in favor of the bill, arguing 'we think it's actually a very positive thing for the state of Utah in terms of where we want to go economically.'
'We have a lot of competition, and we still have a lot of growth within the state. And if we want to stay ahead of the curve, we need to be able to position ourselves to attract large-scale projects in energy and housing and business,' Starks said. 'As we meet with site selectors and companies, they're looking for this.'
Starks also pointed out that the bonding, taxing and land use tools that would be granted to Beehive Development Agency are 'not new tools. These are tools that already exist with other agencies, but yet these are tools that the Governor's Office of Economic Opportunity currently lacks.'
Elaine Oaks, who serves on the South Davis Water District board but said she spoke on behalf of herself, was the first to speak against the bill during Monday's committee — including its latest version.
'Beehive Development Agency — or B-A-D for short — undermines our constitutional framework of local governance, transfering power from elected officials to an unaccountable, private entity with statewide power,' Oaks said. 'It removes planning authority from municipalities and transfers it to BAD — a super planning authority.''
Oaks added that it 'imposes taxation without representation (by) consolidating power to an unelected, private board, creates a shadow organization controlled by the governor with little to no public oversight or checks on its power.'
'Creating BAD is a bad idea,' Oaks said, urging lawmakers to 'kill this bad bill.'
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Steve Waldrip, the governor's senior housing policy adviser, spoke in favor of the bill, seeing it as a tool to help Utah fix its housing crisis by creating a 'consolidated spot for all of our housing policy to be decided as a state. … so we don't have a mismatch between job creation and our housing needs.'
Zachary Frankel, executive director of the Utah Rivers Council, 'begged' lawmakers to oppose the bill, which he described as 'very bad governance.'
He noted HB337 would also allow the Beehive Development Agency to create a public infrastructure district for what it deems is a 'significant community project area.' That could include 'massive, multibillion-dollar water projects.'
'This bill fast tracks multibillion-dollar water projects by exempting local land use controls and trying to expedite the permitting,' Frankel said. 'That is bad utility planning.'
Notably, representatives from conservative groups including the Utah Legislative Watch and Utah Eagle Forum — and even a leader of the Utah County Republican Party — spoke against the bill, warning it could be a final straw for Utahns already distrustful of their government.
'I'm viewing this bill as a tipping point,' said Maryann Christensen, executive director of Utah Legislative Watch. 'Confidence and trust in the Legislature is at an all-time low, and I think this bill will tip a lot of people over the edge. It's too much of a power grab.'
Chistensen also warned that many Utahns she's talked to have been frustrated that 'you guys up here are not responsive' to their concerns.
'They want local control,' she said. 'They don't want a new entity … they want freedom from their government.'
Cameron Diehl, executive director of the Utah League of Cities and Towns — which has been engaged in negotiations over the bill — said the League was 'very concerned and opposed' to SB337's first iteration, but hadn't yet taken a position on the new version of bill as of Monday morning. However, he said the new version was 'in a better place, in large part' because it removed provisions to preempt local authority.
Senate Minority Whip Karen Kwan, D-West Valley, urged lawmakers to slow the bill down, saying it's 'very late in the session' to propose 'such a big change in policy.'
'I'm not comfortable with the idea of the bill to begin with,' she said.
Johnson, the North Ogden senator, said he sees the need for it, arguing that 'local governments should really wake up and start realizing that one of the reasons why there's things being passed to override their local control, is that they don't think much about being reasonable or even being willing to work towards solutions that might help us on things like housing.'
However, Johnson ultimately voted against the bill, adding that he worries 'we're losing credibility with the public that thinks we rush into things and we don't listen. And that bothers me.'
Cullimore said that the 'concerns about government overreach' are 'legitimate and real concerns.' However, he argued the land use and tax authority tools are 'already available' through other agencies.
'What this is doing is bringing these together,' he said, while also 'requiring local consent.'
The Senate president, Adams, cast a rare vote of support during Monday's hearing, urging his colleagues to support it.
Adams told reporters in a media availability later Monday that he sees a need to 'coordinate' all of the state's major project areas.
'You need somebody to start controlling this,' he said. 'I think there needs to be at least another set of eyes looking and overseeing what's happening. That control I think is something that's really important.'
Adams also addressed criticisms that legislators aren't 'listening.' He pointed to other controversial bills this session — including one that would have originally drastically restricted voting by mail — that has been changed multiple times in order to respond to public concerns.
'We are listening,' he said, 'and we're making changes, but we understand the perception is not necessarily reality, and the reality is we're listening.'
The bill now goes to the full Senate for consideration.
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