Agenda - Planning Commission - 02/02/2017

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Cost of Complying for Small Business or City Minn. Stat. § 14.127, subd. 1, provides' that: An agency must determine if the cost of complying with a proposed rule in the first year after the rule takes effect will exceed $25,000 for: (1) any one business that has less than 50 full-time employees; or (2) any one statutory or home rule charter city that has less than ten full-time employees. For purposes of this section, "business" means a business entity organized for profit or as a nonprofit, and includes an individual, partnership, corporation, joint venture, association, or cooperative. The timing of a rule's effect is set forth in Minn. Stat. § 14.38, which provides that a rule is effective five working days after the publication of the notice of adoption in the State Register.' Proposed rule 6106.0070 requires the commissioner, in consultation with the Metropolitan Council, to develop an adoption schedule to be used for amending local plans and ordinances consistent with these rules. The schedule will align as closely as possible to the local governments' comprehensive plan update schedule set from in Min. Stat. § 473.858 (2015). The commissioner must then notify local governments across the MRCCA of the schedule for adopting the provisions required by these rules. Zoning changes are not required to be made prior to publication of the adoption schedule. It will take the commissioner time to develop the adoption schedule, prepare model plan and ordinance language, and provide training and other resources to aid local governments in updating their plans and ordinances to comply with the rules. As such, local governments across the MRCCA will not be required to begin work to amend and adopt MRCCA plans and ordinances to meet or exceed the standards set forth in these proposed MRCCA rules until the second year after adoption of these rules, at the earliest. According to the proposed rules, each local unit of government will be given at least one year to adopt their amended plans and ordinances after being notified by the commissioner to do so. To establish the cost to local governments to implement the proposed MRCCA rules, the DNR surveyed local governments across the MRCCA to estimate implementation costs. The results of that survey are set out in in Table 1 and indicate that the costs incurred by the individual local governments to accomplish this work may exceed $25,000 depending on the complexity of their existing ordinances and the scope of changes needed to establish the new districts and applicable standards within their jurisdiction. Of those communities surveyed, only five small cities in the MRCCA are statutory or home rule cities as defined by Minn. Stat. § 14.127. Of these cities, Lilydale and Mendota indicated that the 'Generally rules like these proposed rules, which require adoption or amendment of an ordinance, do not take effect upon publication in the State Register but require the agency to comply with a statutory waiting period set forth in Minn. Stat. § 14.128, subd. 1 and 2. In this instance, however, the rules are exempted from the statutory waiting period because the DNR was directed by law to adopt the rule. Minn. Stat. § 14.128, subd. 3 and Minn. Stat. § 116.15, subd. 3 and 4 (directing the commissioner to establish, by rule, districts and standards for districts within the MRCCA). 19