Gov. Spencer Cox, whose 15 minutes of fame came when he promoted the idea that we need to “disagree better” in solving political differences, has now fully flipped to the dark side. 

Recently, Cox demanded that Summit and Wasatch counties get on board with the state’s unlimited growth policies and issued thuggish threats to back it up. He sent a guy named Steve Waldrip to a Heber City Council meeting to break some windows. 

“My message back from our good governor, who cares deeply about these issues is:  Your funding as a county is now at risk, meaning none. Anything in my power I will stop. … Any other funding to counties who openly declare war on the state over these growth issues without being thoughtful, without having discussions, and with just saying, ‘We couldn’t care less’ — that funding is now suspended.” 

The only thing missing was, “Thank you for your attention to the matter.”

Well, when you put it that way, bring it on. (As an aside, his beef is with the counties, not Heber City, so he was in the wrong meeting, but whatever.)

At the root of this Mafia-sounding threat is the Utah Preliminary Municipalities Act.  This bad policy gem enacted by the 2024 Legislature allows a real estate developer to write his own zoning. 

The owner (or up to three owners) of “undeveloped” land a quarter mile or more from an existing municipality can petition the lieutenant governor to form a “preliminary municipality.” They have to do a feasibility study that shows that the proposed new town will achieve a population of 100 people and generate sufficient tax revenue to fund the operation of the municipality within five years. If all the streets are privately owned and the costs pawned off to the homeowners association, the bar for feasibility is pretty low. 

If certified as feasible, the developer then has all the powers of a town without any of that election fuss. He gets to write his own zoning laws and approve subdivision plats that lock in the proposed density. 

While aimed at residential growth, it could be used for data centers, nuclear reactors, ski resorts, really anything the developer wants to write into his own zoning. The only powers the pretend municipality lacks are taxation and condemnation. Not even the state Legislature was comfortable handing developers the power of condemn their neighbors’ property. They have to designate 10% of the housing as “affordable.”

In the meantime, they rely on the county for services, and the county is responsible for road maintenance as long as the roads are built to county standards. 

The long and short of it is the developer simply carves out a patch of ground where he gets to write his own zoning, build stuff that the county wouldn’t approve, and at the end of five years, either convert to an actual town or dump the project off entirely on the county that thought it was unworkable and wouldn’t approve it in the first place. 

It sounds crazy because it is. The statute limits this to two applications a year across the state, suggesting that even the Legislature had its doubts. 

Trying to find out how many of these are active and where they are located isn’t easy.  There is one near Moab, downstream on the river along Kane Creek Road. Grand County denied that application because the proposed town is in the floodplain of the Colorado River. That one is in litigation contesting the constitutionality of the whole program. 

There is another up on the Jordanelle Ridge in Wasatch County called Wasatch Highlands. 

The West Hills incorporation proposal west of Kamas is under a former version of this act and will go to a vote in November. 

The Dakota-Pacific/Six Ridge project at Kimball Junction is somewhere in the mix, and so is the Lost Creek plan in Browns Canyon. The listing at the Lieutenant Governor’s Office seems deliberately opaque.

Wasatch and Summit counties have objected to the Preliminary Municipality Act because it eliminates local planning. 

Anybody driving around Jordanelle Reservoir and U.S. 40 into Heber would come to the conclusion that Wasatch County is the most pro-growth jurisdiction in the country.  No mountain is too steep to hack a road on, no terrain too hilly to be flattened for national home building chains to extrude identical townhomes by the hundreds.  Yet the governor doesn’t seem to think that is enough. Pave the last inch.

The pretend town plan is designed to result in stupid planning. Ivory Homes wants to stick 600 houses in Browns Canyon. Given the cost of developing all of the infrastructure from scratch, those will not be cheap houses. They can’t be in a price range that addresses the local job market.   

So who will live there? People commuting to Salt Lake? The home buyers won’t be moving there because of the robust Peoa job market. 

That doesn’t solve anybody’s housing problems, and worsens traffic and air quality issues. They probably end up as sort of third-tier vacation homes, which is exactly what we don’t need.

Utah housing is very expensive. There is an imbalance between the growing population and the available housing. Whether it is a housing shortage or a people surplus is open to interpretation. But shouldn’t we be building housing close to the jobs?

Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland and has been writing this column since 1986.