The Civil Subcommittee advanced HB447, a bill tightening third-party standing requirements for contesting local land use decisions, over the objections of environmental and preservation groups who argued it would improperly bar people from challenging harmful zoning actions. The bill passed with two amendments on a narrow five-to-four vote.
Marcus B. Simon argued existing standing was being abused to block housing and that the bill restores a consistent Friends of the Rappahannock standard. The Southern Environmental Law Center representative countered that 'Virginia already has a fairly strict standing requirement, and this will tighten it even further' and that it would keep people from challenging local decisions that are harmful, including communities like the one in the Wegmans case.
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“I think the idea was we wanted to frankly dissuade these nuisance suits. We wanted to put a higher bar than normal on again, what we view as suits that are often really designed just to prevent any growth or any new changes from happening. It may not be grounded in a real, true personalized harm.”
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Sign in to subscribeWas further defined. And so some of us weakens the Friends of the Rappahannock standard in a Wegmans case recently where the Supreme Court said, well, that kind of particular harm can include a lot of things like traffic and air pollution and other things. And so you can allege it that way. So what the bill does with that essentially in the second part of the bill is it reverses it. Right. So we codify Friends of the Rahappahannock and then on lines Starting on lines 59 of the bill on page two, we essentially reversed the holding in Wegmans and says that it's not enough to essentially, for purposes of the subsection, a burden or obligation does not include alleged changes in property values, traffic, transportation, parking, noise or air pollution impacts, or a claim that the approved land use will adversely affect general safety. Right. That's sort of what I was referring to as the vibes before. Right. And so those are not that. Those elements are not what we're looking for. We're looking for something that's really specific to your property. So that's what the bill does. That's the problem we're trying to solve. Anticipating a…
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