A draft bill to restrict development moratoriums repeats guidelines already established by the Wyoming Supreme Court and undermines community values and self-determination, critics of the measure told lawmakers Tuesday.
Representatives of town and county governments criticized the Construction moratoriums-limitations bill in a Zoom meeting of the Legislature’s Regulatory Reduction Task Force. No action was taken because the panel failed to assemble a quorum.
Nonetheless, lawmakers discussed the bill, which would limit development moratoriums to instances when local governments demonstrate compelling needs to protect or provide essential public services. It also would have limited a moratorium’s length.
The bill is unnecessary because the Wyoming Supreme Court has said that a county “has the power to impose a temporary land freeze,” said Jerimiah Rieman, executive director of the Wyoming County Commissioners Association. The court also outlined limits to moratoriums, he said, including that counties cannot “act so lethargically as to effectively confiscate private property.”
“Other people basically used an arm of the government to be a weapon against that project.”
Cindy DeLancey
Task force members had called for the bill after learning that Teton County, Wyoming’s only blue county and a target for state regulatory critics, had imposed a temporary moratorium this summer. The Jackson pause on buildings larger than 35,000 square feet allowed the town government to address a zoning loophole that would have allowed a 339,239 square-foot hotel complex at the town’s north entrance.
The Jackson Town Council resolved the issue Monday by passing ordinances to limit the size of individual buildings. Mogul Capital can still develop its property, just not with a single megastructure.
The task force’s moratorium-limit bill doesn’t give a community “the protection it deserves,” Jackson liaison Andy Schwartz told the threadbare group assembled Monday. The mega-hotel proposed by Utah-based Mogul Capital would have been “twice the size of the [Wyoming] Capitol,” he said.
Task force co-chairman Rep. Bob Nicholas (R-Cheyenne), the only member to appear in person at the hearing in Cheyenne, sought to rescue the group’s agenda as its charter runs out this year. Unable to take action on the moratorium measure and other bills, he scheduled another online meeting for Dec. 4 and suggested regulatory reduction be a permanent legislative initiative.
Last of the Old West
Schwartz operated a retail business on Jackson’s Town Square and said Jackson Hole’s image as the “Last of the Old West” is an important driver of tourism. Although the day of the lone cowboy may be gone, visitors still flock to boardwalks scuffed by Tony Lamas; Teton County generated more than 50% of the state’s mandatory 3% lodging tax in FY 2024.
Allowing a building the size of the Wyoming Capitol at a town gateway, “that’s not the impact that the community wants,” Schwartz said. “I don’t think [the bill] gives the community the protection it deserves.”
Cheyenne attorney Cindy DeLancey, former head of the Wyoming Business Alliance, Wyoming Heritage Foundation and the first woman elected as Carbon county and prosecuting attorney, questioned whether protecting community values was coming at the expense of property rights. Mogul Capital bought property “only to basically find it devalued … because people in the community [didn’t] like whatever that proposed idea was,” she said.
“Other people … basically used an arm of the government to be a weapon against that project,” she told the committee.
Jackson Town councilors imposed the expiring temporary moratorium on large buildings in response to public outcry and for “the immediate preservation of the public peace, health, safety, and welfare.” Large buildings are fundamentally altering the character of the town, the temporary moratorium ordinance states.
“Changes to that culture and character should be debated and discussed thoughtfully,” the Jackson Town Council unanimously agreed in the June temporary moratorium ordinance.
Schwartz’s testimony didn’t move DeLancey
“It just makes it even more egregious to me to hear that this moratorium was used to basically single out one individual,” she said. “I’m more convinced than ever that we do need to move forward with this bill.”
Moratoriums are a necessary tool for local communities as they organize their development, Melissa Ruth, a Wyoming Planning Association board member, told the committee. For example, Carbon County enacted a moratorium in 2009 to limit new strip clubs, thereby allowing commissioners to draft “sexually oriented business regulations.”
DeLancey served as the Carbon County attorney from January 2007 to December 2010. She advised commissioners on the legal time limits of a moratorium, according to meeting minutes.
Moratoriums can aid communities facing more than strip clubs or Capitol-sized hotels, Ruth said. Some towns and cities are seeing an influx of large data centers and warehouses, she said.
“There’s a lot of communities that do not have regulations or standards relating to what are commonly called large load electric users, things like data centers, data mining, cryptocurrency mining, things like that that have a significant impact on water, sewer, electricity and community character,” Ruth said. “There are communities that have put moratoriums in place in other states in order to draft specific regulations to address things like that.”
The task force has criticized Teton County and Jackson land use and zoning regulations, seen by some as a misuse of power to achieve a no-growth agenda while stepping on private property rights.
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