Legislators back UTA plan to skip local rail-line consent

The Utah Transit Authority may have the right to build everything from commuter rail tracks to billboards without local government consent under a proposed bill endorsed by a legislative committee.

The bill would allow UTA to bypass local approvals, permits and fees for anything it builds within the 200-foot-wide rail corridor that stretches from Brigham City to Payson.

The legislation is not a tactic being used by UTA to impact communities without consulting with local leaders, bill sponsor Sen. Gregory Bell, R-Farmington, told members of the Political Subdivisions Interim Committee. It simply prevents the regional project from being delayed by external demands, he said.

For example, some cities have requested a chain-link fence along the corridor, a multimillion-dollar and time-consuming addition to the project that never was needed when freight trains were operating on the line.

"They [UTA] are very flexible," Bell said. "They just don't want to be held hostage."

Jody Hoffman, policy analyst for the League of Cities and Towns, said that local governments fear losing control of projects within their borders because of unanticipated impacts. For example, UTA could place billboards within the corridor, even if a city has banned them.

"It's a 200-foot corridor where UTA could put anything up as a revenue source and the cities can't do anything about it," she said. "This bill is giving them [UTA] an atomic bomb."

Kathryn Pett, general counsel for UTA, said giving the agency an exemption was only designed to facilitate the regional commuter rail project, not to eliminate local control from the process. Because UTA receives funding from local governments and their governing board is appointed by city councils and county commissions, it would be counter-productive to ignore the concerns of those same officials, she said.

"Nobody at UTA has ever said that we don't want to talk," Pett said. "We consider ourselves employed by local government."

Sen. Lyle Hillyard, R-Logan, urged the cities to negotiate their own, individual agreements with UTA before the January session begins. He said he suspects the commuter rail project will override legislators' usual concerns about local control.

"The project will override the concerns of individual cities when it goes to the Legislature, Halyard said. "It is not a Layton City issue, not a Centerville City issue. It is a state of Utah issue."

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E-mail: jloftin@desnews.com

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