Houston Democrats

"GRANDFATHERING" CONSIDERED BY FULL LEGISLATURE

Tuesday Morning the Texas Senate will vote on SB 848, a bill that will
destroy local control of development by expanding the "Grandfathering"
laws. Wednesday the House of Representatives will vote on its version of
the same bill, HB 1704.

These bills allow developers to submit defective and incomplete plans---as
in a sketch on a cocktail napkin---and lock in development regulations for
years and decades until the project is built. In this way developers
circumvent water quality and regional planning regulations that cities and
counties have worked hard to enact. These bills serve no public purpose
but allow developers to build at higher densities for higher profits than
ever before. SB 848/HB 1704 are developer dream bills that destroy local
control of development and water quality.

Your help is crucial to STOPPING these bills. Here's what you can do: 1)
Call your State Senator Tuesday Morning before 11 a.m. That is the only
way they will know you OPPOSE 848 before they go to the Senate floor. 2)
Call your State Representative next and tell them you OPPOSE HB 1704.
3) Come to the GEAA press conference on these bills at the Capitol,
E1.002 at Noon on Tuesday.

To find out who your Senator and Representative are, use this free web link:

http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/fyi/fyi.htm

MORE INFORMATION

SB 848/HB 1704 allow developers to lock in the regulations that will
apply to their project by mailing in an application, even though the
application may be incomplete or defective.

These bills allow the postmark date to serve as the application date at
which point all development regulations, including water quality
regulations, will be locked in for years or decades until the project is
built. These bills also provide for regulations to be locked in when a
developer merely acquires a promise that utilities will be provided to the
site-a decision that doesn't have anything to do with project density or
design.

Changing the grandfathering laws will force cities to develop new methods
for dealing with these applications, as well as implementing a complicated
regulatory structure applying laws in effect at several different times,
not to mention defending all those decisions in court. Cities will be
forced to waste valuable taxpayer dollars figuring out how to implement
these new laws---while they don't serve any public purpose and only
increase developer profits.

Please circulate this among your friends and groups,