AB 260

Current law specifies whether a county, town, city, or village has the right to

approve or object to a plat (the map of a subdivision). Generally, the location of the

subdivision determines which local governmental unit or units have the right to

approve the plat. However, if a subdivision lies in the unincorporated area within

three miles of the corporate limits of a first, second, or third class city, or within one

and one-half miles of a fourth class city or village, the governing body of the city or

village has the right to approve the plat under its extraterritorial plat approval

jurisdiction, as well as the board of the town within which the subdivision lies and

the planning agency of the county within which the subdivision lies if the planning

agency employs on a full-time basis a professional engineer, a planner, or another

person charged with administering zoning or other planning legislation. Approval

of a plat is conditioned on, among other things, the plat's compliance with the local

ordinances and a comprehensive, master, or development plan of the local

governmental unit or units that have the right to approve the plat.

In

Wood v. City of Madison

, 2003 WI 24, 260 Wis. 2d 71, 659 N.W. 2d 31, the

Wisconsin Supreme Court determined that a city with extraterritorial plat approval

jurisdiction over a plat could object to the plat on the basis of the proposed use of land

outside the city limits.

Wood

overruled

Boucher Lincoln-Mercury v. Madison Plan

Comm.

, 178 Wis. 2d 74, 503 N.W. 2d 265 (Ct. App. 1993), which held that

extraterritorial plat approval or denial based on the use of the land in the plat is

unilateral land use control (or zoning), and that the statutes require extraterritorial

zoning to be a cooperative effort between the city and the town in which the zoning

ordinance is in effect.

This bill prohibits a municipality (city or village) from denying approval of a

plat or certified survey map on the basis of the proposed use of land within the

extraterritorial plat approval jurisdiction of the municipality unless the denial is

based on a plan or regulations adopted under the statute referred to in

Boucher

Lincoln-Mercury

that sets out the requirements for the cooperative effort between

the municipality and the town for extraterritorial zoning.