Guest Column: SF 40 Addresses Unconstitutional Housing Mitigation Fees

Imagine discovering one morning that your usual $3 cup of coffee now costs $4.

Confused, you eventually find out that your town decided to require you to kick in on coffee for others who cannot afford or are not willing to pay for it. You also learn that unelected bureaucrats will choose who gets the free coffee, and the recipients do not have to be citizens or even living here legally.

You are about to be in genuine disbelief as I describe what is currently happening right here in Teton County, Wyoming, USA. However, as you read, remember that there is a solution in the form of SF40, but the senate needs to have the guts to pass it. 

Take “Bob” for example, who literally built his primary residence all by himself, never using a single Teton County worker, yet he was forced to offset his “impact” and contribute to mitigation fees to obtain a building permit. Where did Bob’s money go?

What if now I tell you that those mitigation fees went to house someone working at the Whole Foods in town, owned by Jeff Bezos?

Or could Bob have subsidized a second homeowner’s new place in Teton County? Or what if the fees were going to a former Old Navy executive who was living in San Francisco, and the very year she moved to Jackson, the residents of Teton County gave her a $150,000 grant for a down payment.

All three of these examples are actual recipients of Teton County’s housing programs paid for by others.

SF40 currently seeks to address the unconstitutional housing mitigation fees forcefully extracted in certain towns around the state.

When you apply for a building permit in Jackson for a house that’s larger than 2,500 sq feet, the permit is not issued unless you pay the extraction fee (aka, kick in on other people’s housing). Mitigation fees are also assessed on guest houses, remodels, expansions, and new developments. 

I once called up the owner of a Category One, “low-income” house and asked her why she was selling.

She replied that she was relocating back to her beach house in Florida.

Bizarrely, in Teton County, a person qualifies for workforce housing paid for by others as long as just one person in the household works 30 hours per week within the county, and that worker can still own another home as long as it is not within 75 miles of Jackson.

This means that everyone living past Smoot who wants to work in Jackson is well on their way to qualifying for a second home in Teton County at taxpayer expense.

Several years ago, I was paired with a Spanish language exchange partner named Leo who worked as a dishwasher at a restaurant in town.

He earned less than $20 an hour, and later I saw an income distribution statement for that exact restaurant which showed that it generated over $500,000 in net profit.

By earning so little, Leo, who was here illegally, now qualified for housing programs paid for by others, like Jackson’s First/Last/Deposit program where Teton County gives residents, no matter their legal status, up to $6,000 per year, and they can reapply each year to ensure they have “safe housing."

My friends and I made such a stink about it that the electeds began block granting the money to a non-profit in hopes of scaling back any oversight.

I often tell people the quickest way to become a millionaire in Jackson Hole is through our housing programs.

Many people in Teton County initially bought an “attainable” home for around $350,000. The reason they were priced so low is because taxpayers contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to supplement the price of each home.

In 20 years when the sunset clause expires, the homeowner is able to sell the house at market rate for over $2 million.

Yes, the very people claiming that housing needs to be affordable didn’t feel that way when it came time to sell their own home. They want to get the maximum price and pocket as much money as they can.

To my knowledge, no one has ever offered to pay back the taxpayers for the money we contributed to their “success." 

By not abiding to the Wyoming Constitution, and by ignoring recent Supreme Court cases like Sheetz vs. County of Eldorado, Teton County’s politicians practically begged me to push for an amendment on SF40.

Democrat Senator Mike Gierau, along with some of the members of the Regulatory Reduction Task Force, initially passed SF40 in the senate, and this bill was intended to stifle your ability to protest a new development, like the 48-unit “low-income” housing complex eventually built at our historic fairgrounds in 2023. 

Thankfully, Representative John Bear and the rest of the Republicans on the House Appropriations committee could smell this thing a mile away, and they pushed back on what Senator Gierau was trying to do.

While the House Appropriations committee was addressing zoning rules and policies in SF40, they also addressed the unconstitutional problems with housing mitigation fees that have begun to erupt around the state.

This revised bill then passed through the House and went back to the Senate, where Senator Gierau asked the chamber to vote down the bill so it could head to a conference committee for negotiations.

A conference committee can be called to negotiate the language of a bill if the house and senate cannot agree on the language of the bill.

Majority Floor Leader Tara Nethercott urged the Senators to stick together with Gierau and they voted down SF40, sending it to that conference committee Gierau asked for.

Senate President Bo Biteman then appointed Gierau as Chairman of the conference committee, for real, and now Gierau refuses to hold that conference committee he begged for in hopes of killing the bill by running out the clock. What a farce. This Friday we hope to bring SF40 back for a vote in the Senate.

How is it my or your responsibility to pay for someone else’s housing just because they knowingly and willingly moved to the wealthiest county in America?

It’s not! This practice is clearly unconstitutional.  There have already been 18 successful lawsuits across the country to overturn this confiscatory scheme. 

Where will Teton County come up with cash to refund these illegal forced payments? The Wyoming legislature needs to stop this practice now by passing SF40 before other counties are lured into financial jeopardy by following Teton County.

Lastly and hopefully, I pray Gov Gordon will not veto SF40 if it passes, because that will cost the counties of Wyoming hundreds of thousands of dollars when they defend this nonsense (and lose).

Please email your Wyoming Senator and ask them to vote in favor of SF40, and please email me if you have been affected by these forced housing mitigation fees and are willing to fight back.

Rebecca Bextel, Jackson

rebeccabextel@gmail.com