Inland port bill sails through Legislature

Amended law shrinks boundaries, provides for affordable housing

By John Rogers

Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski opted to sit out the negotiations that crafted changes to the law creating an inland port in her city’s Northwest Quadrant. But when the Utah Legislature met in special session last week to consider amending the legislation, the mayor was front and center lobbying against the retooled bill. City council members were also on the hill during the day-long session. But, led by Council Chairperson Erin Mendenhall, they were asking legislators to pass the law.

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In the end, it wasn’t close. By votes of 66-5 in the House and 22-2 in the Senate, the Inland Port Authority law with its new provisions passed with little debate. Even several members of the Democratic Caucus, with which Biskupski had met earlier in the day to ask for its help in opposing the bill, voted in favor.

“The bill needs to be killed,” Biskupski told the caucus, repeating her earlier argument that the Inland Port Authority board would still have the power to ultimately usurp land use authority and would still be able to control 100 percent of the project area’s tax increment. “No city, especially the capital city, should roll over and allow for this,” she told lawmakers. The mayor was hoping that the port authority law would be scrapped in its entirety and new legislation be written with participation from all stakeholders.

Sen. Jim Dabakis, D-Salt Lake City, who was instrumental in bringing city and state leaders together to hammer out the changes, voted in favor of the changed law, arguing, “This is tangibly much better for the people of Salt Lake City than the status quo.”

Among other things, the amendments to the bill shrunk the port boundaries by about 4,000 acres by excluding wetlands and developed areas, clarified the port authority’s land-use appeal process, placed a 2 percent cap on property tax increment to be used for port authority operations and mandated that 10 percent of the tax increment to be set aside for affordable housing.

The bill also changed the authority’s conflict-of-interest provisions, specifically to allow Councilman James Rogers to serve on the board, even though he owns office rentals within the five-mile proximity limit set by the unamended law.

The original Inland Port Authority legislation was passed in the waning hours of the Legislature’s regular session in March. It created the structure for what leaders hope will be an international trade hub for the western United States near Salt Lake City International Airport and the soon-to-be-built state prison.

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