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Though several bills this legislative session died that took aim at Jackson and Teton County’s strategy for affordable and workforce housing, legal challenges loom.
In Teton County, land development regulations require that some developers provide affordable housing units or pay fees to offset development impacts. A few bills were aimed at ending or restricing these types of programs statewide.
Senate File 40 would have banned requiring developer fees that fund workforce or affordable housing. House Bill 197 would have limited fees for residents or commercial businesses looking to build on their own property but retained local control.
KHOL’s Jenna McMurtry sat down with Teton County Commissioner Natalia Macker and Jackson Mayor Arne Jorgensen to talk about the future of the town and county’s housing program and the challenges they could still face.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Jenna McMurtry: Thank you County Commissioner, Natalia Macker and Mayor Arne Jorgensen for talking today about the legislative session and the future of local affordable housing. When I talked to each of you in January, there was one theme in particular that struck a chord with you both, bills that challenged exaction fees and workforce housing programs.
Arne, you’ve overseen several projects as town counselor and now as mayor that require offsets for affordable housing. Can you explain what these bills would have meant for the town if they became laws?
Arne Jorgensen: They’re both quite different. HB 197 was actually a bill that we supported. The Wyoming Association of Municipalities, as well as the Wyoming County Commissioners Association, supported it.
And they worked hard on a bill that clearly outlined that we have the right to do these efforts in this work, as well as putting in boundaries and putting on guardrails. That was a success. I’m very disappointed that the bill did not pass.
Senate file 40, [was] a very different animal. The core of the bill was about protest votes or protest petitions, which was a bill that we were supportive of. It was one of the few bills, maybe the only bill, that came out of the regulatory reduction task force. At the last minute, after any public comment was made, [Gillette Representative] Chairman [John] Bear proposed an amendment that would remove our ability to do these types of exactions. No opportunity for us to talk about it. No opportunity for us to tell the ‘why’ and the successes behind it.
JM: These bills didn’t pass, but we still have reason to believe that similar legal battles to local control could be on the way. Jackson has had housing programs in place for a few decades now — did the town or county receive the same kind of flak with similar housing programs?
Natalia Macker: If I look over my tenure as a commissioner, and where we were nine years ago, we were largely the anomaly in Teton County.
Enter into the pandemic and some other factors that really changed in other places around the state, and what we had been experiencing became relevant in other places in the state. I think now that other places in the state are seeing both the need to just generate more housing in their community, but also the impacts of the rising costs of that housing, they understand our position differently than they might have previously, where it was easy to just say, ‘oh, they’re different over there.’
We’re actually trying to attract this economic driver to our community and we recognize that safe, stable, affordable housing is necessary for us to have a workforce here. That requires investment and that looks different depending on where you are and where that investment’s going to come from. I see a change today in how the whole state is having a conversation about housing, and there are coalitions around housing working across the state, not just in Teton County.
JM: Some of the pushback to these programs have had local roots. One Jackson resident has been particularly vocal, that’s Rebecca Bextel. She got outside legislators to target Teton County’s strategy with Senate File 40, arguing that the programs here are too costly and restrictive for property owners.
This isn’t the first time Bextel, or others from Teton County, have attempted to bypass local development rules by going to Cheyenne. Do you hear these complaints often and if you do, are you doing anything to address them?
AJ: My initial response to that would be, we have elections. Almost everybody in the last 30 years have run for local elections with a strong support of a variety of housing solutions. There might be differences in policies here and there. Those supporters win elections. That matters.
We also have huge support for housing programs with our SPET [Special Purpose Excise Tax] elections. That math, it’s probably over $100 million of housing SPET items that have been approved across the community in the last 30 years. So we have local support. Strong, strong local support. I want to make that really clear.
We are very responsive locally. When we’ve made mistakes in the housing program, we fix them. We don’t repeat them. We are completely open. When people come and want to suggest changes or have found barriers, we will address those. We do a housing supply plan every year. We go through our rules and regulations every two years, if I remember correctly. We are constantly pushing and pulling and improving. And, I’m very proud of that.
JM: Now that the session is done and folks like Bextel are kind of hinting at legal challenges to the programs here, does that worry you both?
AJ: These programs in the current iteration or under similar iteration have been in place for over 30 years. To my knowledge, there’s never been a question about the legality, meaning actually getting into the courts. There is one entity in our system of government that determines whether something is constitutional, and that’s the court system. So if someone chooses to go down that road, that’s fine. That’s their right. That’s their choice.
We have been very careful for 30-plus years to structure these programs to align with the various Supreme Court actions that require us to connect them to a nexus, connect them to an impact that is being mitigated. We did four or five reports in the last 30 years. Those reports come up with a list of rates that are legally justifiable. It then goes into the political realm in terms of where we set those rates.
My understanding right now is our rates are about 38% of what we could legally charge or what the report suggests we could legally charge. So, that’s pretty low. We’ve been higher than that. We’ve never been at 100% as I understand it. I feel very confident in the legal basis that we have worked very hard for for 30 years.
It’s easy to say it’s unconstitutional. It’s easy to say I’m gonna sue you.
NM: I agree. I feel confident in the legal footing we have, and if we need to defend it, we will stand up and defend it.
I think it’s unfortunate just because it is a distraction from all the positive progress we’ve made on housing in our community and from our ability to continue to focus and innovate. in housing.
I welcome all of the dialogue around it, but we have to base it on the actual factual information about our programs, what we’re doing and the background of them. The more that we can educate everybody in our community around that, the better because then everyone becomes understanding of how they fit into the continuum no matter what their housing situation is.
AJ: We look forward to engaging with people that want to come and be part of this discussion in a way that’s positive, that’s solution driven. For those that don’t want us to do this work, my question is, what’s your vision of Teton County?
As elected officials, that’s easy. We could stop this work. The outcome is 100% predictable. We become a resort only. We lose any sense of community. Any sense that people are living and working in this community that are dedicated to our community members as individuals, as families, dedicated to conservation of this amazing place, that’s gone. It becomes a resort that’s driven by economic interest. That will be the outcome.
Let’s make it really clear that it’s easy to suggest something is unconstitutional, something is wrong. Bring us a solution. We’re happy to think about that with you and engage with that. And I look forward to that and frankly enjoy that.
JM: We’ve covered so much ground. I’m wondering if there are wins that you both are celebrating right now as you have been working on several housing programs the last few years in office and you’re currently working on more.
NM: Oh my gosh, one of my favorite things to do is attend the dedication ceremonies that Habitat for Humanity does for their homes over the years.
I would really invite people in our community that sort of understand affordable housing or think we should have it, but then at times struggle with it. Sometimes that’s me and I struggle with this. Are we doing the right thing? Is this the most fair way of doing this?
Attending one of those ceremonies and witnessing families who have faced challenges that I can’t fathom. Seeing them get to enter into a home that’s theirs, with their family and their children is a deeply emotional experience for me and is highly motivating for why this is important.
Again, it’s easy for us to be in this policy-driven, theoretical headspace. But when you get down to the front door and the key and the kids and the bedroom and the giggles and the tears and the joy, one home at a time, people’s lives are being changed.
That makes all of the strife really worth it. Now that the program has been in place for so many years, generations of families, their lives are changing.
When I think about the success, it’s about bedrooms and number of units and all of that, but it’s really about the families and the kids that have grown up in the homes and how we’re making a difference in our community and how our community is showing up to make a difference for itself.
