AB 243

Under the current law commonly known as the "Smart Growth" statute, if a

city, village, town, county, or regional planning commission (local governmental unit)

creates a development plan or master plan (comprehensive plan) or amends an

existing comprehensive plan, the plan must contain certain planning elements. The

required planning elements include the following: housing; transportation; utilities

and community facilities; agricultural, natural, and cultural resources; economic

development; land use; and intergovernmental cooperation.

Under current law, beginning on January 1, 2010, certain actions of a local

governmental unit that affect land use must be consistent with that local

governmental unit's comprehensive plan. The actions to which this requirement

applies are official mapping, local subdivision regulation, and zoning ordinances,

including zoning of shorelands or wetlands in shorelands. Also under current law,

beginning on January 1, 2010, if a local governmental unit engages in any of these

specified actions, the comprehensive plan must contain at least all of the required

planning elements.

This bill delays the implementation date in current law from January 1, 2010,

until January 1, 2012, but only for a local governmental unit that has not enacted

a comprehensive plan that takes effect on January 1, 2010, and that take certain

steps towards meeting the consistency requirement. The local government unit

must adopt a resolution before January 1, 2010, that commits the local government

unit to enacting a comprehensive plan that will take effect on or before January 1,

2012, and the local government must have applied for but not yet received, or must

have decided not to apply for, a grant under a program administered by the

Department of Administration that provides funding for local planning activities.