Cities in Johnson County are lining up in opposition to two bills circulating in the Kansas Legislature that take aim at municipalities’ powers when it comes to zoning and citizen petitions.
One bill would sharply curtail a city’s ability to rezone private property, and the other would strengthen petitioners’ efforts to put a question on a local ballot, circumventing a city’s ability to stop it.
The two measures, both introduced and discussed earlier this month in Kansas Senate committees, appear to be a direct response to last year’s contentious fight over zoning that played out in Prairie Village.
And while the political furor in that city has died down somewhat since November’s election, tensions remain, most notably with Councilmember Lori Sharp, who helped lead the resident-led group opposed to zoning changes before being elected last fall.
Sharp is now taking the unusual step of going against Prairie Village’s official stance in opposition to the bills and has testified as a private citizen in support of the two measures.
Prairie Village, Overland Park, Merriam, Mission, Westwood and other cities say the measures — Senate Bill 346 and Senate Bill 474 — threaten their home rule authority, a power derived from a decades-old constitutional amendment that grants wide latitude to local governments to make decisions for their own communities.
Topeka as well as the Kansas League of Municipalities, have also testified in opposition to the bills. Manhattan and Wichita have testified against SB 474.
Both bills were heard before senate committees earlier this month after being introduced in the Senate Federal and State Affairs Committee, chaired by Shawnee Republican Sen. Mike Thompson.
Opponents expressed anxiety in both written and oral testimony to the committees.
“This process (laid out in SB 474) opens up a degree of confusion and it diffuses the power in way that, our maintain, is not a prudent step toward wise governance,” said Nathan Eberline, executive director for the League of Kansas Municipalities, during a committee hearing on Feb. 20.
On March 4, the committee voted against sending forward an amended version of SB 474.
The fight started in Prairie Village last year
SB 346 and SB 474 deal with rezoning and an administrative ordinance restriction in resident-led petitions — both of which were central to petitions a group of Prairie Village residents circulated last year.
Stop Rezoning Prairie Village, the resident opposition group, pressed the city to halt any potential changes to Prairie Village’s zoning code after a special task force issued a set of housing recommendations in 2022.
The group accused the city of trying to pave the way to allow rezoning of single-family neighborhoods to make way for apartments, but the city never actually discussed any such plans.
Still, the group’s effort snowballed last year into a movement to remake city government and spawned a petition drive.
Residents circulated three petitions, two of which aimed to change city governance by cutting the city council in half and reducing the mayor’s powers.
A third petition focused on limiting rezoning and, in particular, curtailing the use of accessory dwelling units — including so-called “granny flats” — and other multifamily projects in single-family neighborhoods in Prairie Village.
The Stop Rezoning group also endorsed six candidates in their bids for city council who also supported its movement.
The city ultimately challenged all three petitions related to Prairie Village’s zoning laws and city council government makeup, suing the petitioners and asking a district court judge to decide if they were valid to be placed on a future ballot.
The judge ultimately found only one petition eligible to go on a ballot, while she dismissed the other two, including the petition dealing with rezoning.
In her ruling, the judge sided with the city’s argument that the rezoning petition was “administrative” in nature, meaning it attempted to change an existing city ordinance.
What the petitioning and rezoning bills say
There are two different types of ordinances: a legislative ordinance, which creates a new law, and an administrative ordinance, which carries out an existing law.
Currently, under state law, administrative ordinances cannot be initiated via petition or taken to a public vote — a key sticking point in the city of Prairie Village’s argument against taking last year’s rezoning petition to the ballot box last fall.
SB 474 would strike at a city’s ability to stop a petition from going on a ballot simply because the petition is “administrative.”
The bill would change language in K.S.A 12-3013, a state law dealing with the petition process.
Proponents of SB 474 say the current administrative ordinance limitation makes it easier for cities to challenge resident-led petitions — as Prairie Village did last year — and simultaneously creates too high of a bar for citizens petitioning for a new ordinance or seeking to change existing city rules.
Opponents of SB 474 say enacting the bill would create more risk of making changes to how a city government operates that citizens don’t fully comprehend.
For example, Amanda Stanley, the city attorney for the city of Topeka, said she often hears the public suggest the city use asphalt to fix potholes in the winter rather than cold patch. Asphalt companies reduce operations in the winter, though, so cities have to use alternate solutions to patch potholes — such as cold patch, Stanley said.
Watch the senate committee on federal and state affairs’ hearing for SB 474, which took place on Feb. 20, in the video embedded below:
SB 346 calls for stricter language inK.S.A 12-757, a state law that deals with zoning.
That law currently says a city can initiate changes to zoning regulations. It also effectively allows a property owner to request a rezoning change to their property.
On the other hand, SB 346 would ensure that under state statute, the property owner alone — and not the city — can request a rezoning change to their property.
In effect, the bill would prohibit a city from initiating any zoning changes to private property, even if that property’s zoning district contradicts the city’s plans for how that property can be used in the future.
Proponents of SB 346 argue that citizens deserve equal say in rezoning amendments as the governing body.
Opponents argue that the bill negatively impacts a governing body’s ability to carry out its comprehensive plan, or create hurdles for developing private property in the future.
Sharp testified as a ‘private citizen’
Though Prairie Village officially opposes the bill, one councilmember is speaking out in favor of them.
Ward 3 Councilmember Lori Sharp helped lead the resident group opposed to zoning changes before being elected in November, along with three other candidates endorsed by the group.
Sharp declined to elaborate to the Post on her testimonies for both SB 346 and SB 474, but noted that she testified in favor of SB 474 as a “private citizen.”
Sharp’s written testimony in support of SB 346 details Stop Rezoning Prairie Village’s journey from opposing the housing recommendations to circulating petitions in 2023.
“I support SB 346 so that cities can’t rezone properties without landowner’s consent,” Sharp wrote.
Sharp provided oral testimony in support of SB 474, discussing her work on the resident-led Prairie Village petitions and “how high the bar is” to be successful in the effort.
“This whole ordinance is about the fact that the citizens, if they can get it on the ballot, they should be able to vote,” Sharp said. “I, for one, would be OK with the result, just as long as the people get to vote on this.”
Several other Prairie Village residents involved with the Stop Rezoning group testified in support of the measures, as well.
City opposes both bills via lobbyist
The city of Prairie Village and four other northeast Johnson County cities opposed SB 346 and SB 474 through written testimony from Little Government Relations, a Topeka-based lobbying firm.
Other Johnson County cities including Overland Park and Westwood submitted their own written testimony in opposition to each bill.
Prairie Village and other cities opposed SB 346 because, they say, it “adds uncertainty to zoning statutes” and takes away cities’ “ability to carry out essential function,” according to their written testimony.
The city opposes SB 474 because it challenges the local government’s home rule authority and “weakens the processes for governing body decision making,” according to the written testimony.
Deputy City Administrator Nickie Lee told the Post via email that Prairie Village’s position is that both bills could violate local home rule, which is the first priority in the city’s 2024 legislative platform. Councilmember Sharp voted in favor of the 2024 legislative platform in December 2023.
Little Government Relations reviews new bills as they come up to see if they align or conflict with any of the city’s adopted legislative priorities, Lee said.
“Councilmembers can individually have opinions on issues as long as they are representing themselves and not the City in their testimony,” Lee added.
This story was originally published by the Johnson County Post.
