Agenda - Planning Commission - 05/07/2015

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March.25, 2015 1 Volume 9 1 Issue 6 Zoning Bulletin multiple provisions of the City's zoning ordinance, including: a general zoning ordinance that prohibits construction or excavation without a "zon- ing certificate" issued by the City zoning inspector after approvals by the zoning commission and city council; and four zoning ordinances specifi- cally relating to oil and gas drilling. Those four ordinances required pay- ment of fees and the deposit of a performance bond, a public hearing, and the obtainment of a "conditional zoning certificate," and made violation of those requirements a first-degree misdemeanor. Beck argued that the City's ordinances conflicted with the statewide regulatory scheme in R.C. Chapter 1509 and were thus preempted. The trial court disagreed. Beck appealed. The court of appeals agreed with Beck. It reversed the trial court. The court of appeals held that R.C. 1509.02 prohibited the City from enforcing the five ordinances. The City appealed. The City argued that the Home Rule Amendment to the Ohio Constitution granted the City the power to enforce its own permit- ting scheme atop R.C. 1509.02. DECISION: Judgment of court of appeals affirmed. The Supreme Court of Ohio held that the City's five ordinances at issue did not represent a valid exercise of the City's home -rule power under the Home Rule Amendment to the Ohio Constitution. The court explained that the Home Rule Amendment gives municipali- ties the authority to "exercise all powers of local self-government and to adopt and enforce within their limits such local police, sanitary and other similar regulations, as are not in conflict with general laws." (Ohio Consti- tution, Article XVIII,§ 3.) The court further explained that given the fact that the Home Rule Amendment does not allow municipalities to exercise their police powers in a manner that "conflict[s] with general laws," a mu- nicipal ordinance must yield to a state statute if: (1) the ordinance is an exercise of the police power, rather than of local self-government; (2) the statute is a general law; and (3) the ordinance is in conflict with the statute. Here, the court found that all three of those elements were met and thus the Home Rule Amendment did not allow the City's ordinances to apply concurrently with R.C. 1509.02. The court found that the ordinances constituted an exercise of police power rather than local self-government. The ordinances did not regulate the form and structure of local government, but rather prohibited—even criminalized—the act of drilling for oil and gas without a permit. For the purposes of its analysis, the court also found that R.C. 1509.02 constituted a general law in that it: (1) is part of a statewide and comprehen- sive legislative enactment; (2) applies to all parts of the state alike and oper- ates uniformly throughout the state; (3) sets forth police, sanitary, or similar regulations, rather than purports only to grant or limit legislative power of a municipal corporation to prescribe those regulations; and (4) prescribes a rule of conduct upon citizens generally. The City had argued that the second of those conditions was not met. The 10 © 2015 Thomson Reuters