The Planning Act and Who Decides

Every city and every county in Idaho has to plan and zone. That is the whole of Idaho Code 67-6503, a single sentence that has been on the books since 1975. The rest of Title 67, Chapter 65, the Local Land Use Planning Act, explains how. People in the business call it LLUPA, pronounced "loo-pa," and you will hear it at every hearing you attend.

The Water, Land and Agriculture course in this series has a lesson on land use that covers the basics of the plan, conditional use permits and written decisions (Land Use: Plans, Zoning, Permits and Farmland). This course goes further. It follows a land use case from the people who decide it, through every kind of application, to the courthouse steps.

What the Act is for

Idaho Code 67-6502 lists thirteen purposes, labeled (a) through (m). They do not all point the same way, and that is the point. The first one is to protect property rights while making room for other needed development such as low-cost housing. Others tell local governments to make sure public facilities are provided at reasonable cost, to encourage protection of prime farm, forest and mining land, to encourage urban development inside incorporated cities, to avoid undue water and air pollution, and to protect airports.

When someone at a hearing says "the purpose of the Act is to protect property rights," they are right. When the next person says "the Act is about protecting farmland and public services," they are also right. Anyone following the case should hear both out and then ask which local standard actually decides it.

Two kinds of decision makers

The statute calls the city council or the board of county commissioners the governing board. Under Idaho Code 67-6504, a governing board can do all the planning and zoning work itself. Many small cities do exactly that. If it does not, it must create, by ordinance, a planning commission and a zoning commission, or one planning and zoning commission that does both jobs.

A commission can act with the governing board's full authority with two exceptions. It cannot adopt ordinances, and it cannot give final approval to land subdivisions. Everything else depends on the local ordinance. In one county the commission makes the final call on conditional use permits. In the next county over, it only recommends and the commissioners decide. Read the ordinance before you tell anyone "the commission approved it."

A county's powers under the Act apply to the unincorporated area. Cities zone inside their limits. Counties zone everything else, including the ring around a city called the area of impact, which gets its own lesson later in this course.

Who can serve on a commission

Section 67-6504 sets the ground rules. A commission has at least 3 and no more than 12 voting members. The mayor or the chair of the county board appoints them, and a majority of the governing board confirms. Members must have lived in the county for at least two years before appointment and must keep living there. Terms run 3 to 6 years, set by ordinance. Nobody serves more than two full consecutive terms unless two-thirds of the governing board agrees by recorded motion. Members can be removed for cause by majority vote, and they are chosen "without respect to political affiliation."

County commissions have two extra geography rules, written so that rural residents are not outvoted by town residents on decisions about rural land:

• The one-third cap. No more than one-third of county appointees may live in an incorporated city of 1,500 or more people, and those seats rotate among the qualifying cities.
hearing examiner, a professionally trained or licensed planner, attorney, engineer or architect, to hear subdivisions, special use permits, variances and rezones that fit the plan. Depending on the ordinance, the examiner decides or recommends.

Conflicts of interest

Idaho Code 67-6506 is short and strict. A board member, commissioner or employee cannot take part in a proceeding when they, their employer, a business partner or associate, or a relative within the second degree by blood or marriage has an economic interest in it. Second degree reaches parents, children, siblings, grandparents and grandchildren, plus the same relatives of a spouse. Any actual or potential interest has to be disclosed at or before the meeting. A member with a conflict sits out every part of the decision, and a knowing violation is a misdemeanor.

Disclosing a conflict does not cure it. Under 67-6506 a member with an economic interest does not vote after disclosing it. They step away from the whole matter.

The two hats

The same five people can spend the first hour of a meeting writing policy and the second hour acting like a panel of judges. Idaho courts have recognized the difference since Cooper v. Board of County Commissioners of Ada County in 1980, which treated a site-specific rezone as quasi-judicial. The Idaho Supreme Court repeated the point in Eacret v. Bonner County (2004): when a board applies general rules to specific people or situations, its decision is quasi-judicial and subject to due process.

	Legislative	Quasi-judicial
Examples	Adopting or amending the plan, rewriting zoning text, countywide map updates	Conditional use permits, variances, subdivisions, rezoning one parcel
Who is affected	Many people, as a class	An applicant and identifiable neighbors
Private talks with officials	Ordinary lobbying	Ex parte contact that must be disclosed on the record
Decision based on	Policy judgment	Express standards applied to facts in the record
Court review	Narrow	Judicial review on the record under 67-6521

This table drives most of the rest of the course. Notice rules, ex parte rules, written decisions and appeals all hinge on which hat the board is wearing.

Common mix-ups

• Claim: Planning commissioners are elected. What the evidence shows: They are appointed by the mayor or county chair and confirmed by the governing board under 67-6504. Voters reach them only through the officials who appoint them.
• Claim: The state approves local zoning decisions. What the evidence shows: The state writes the framework. Cities and counties decide, and courts review. No state agency signs off on an ordinary rezone or permit.
• Claim: The commission always has the final word. What the evidence shows: It cannot adopt ordinances or finally approve subdivisions, and on everything else the local ordinance decides whether it recommends or decides.

Reporting angle

• Request the ordinance that created the commission, its bylaws, and the appointment and confirmation records for every current member. The Idaho FOIA / Public Records Letter Generator drafts the request.
• Build a roster with each member's city of residence, impact area status, term start and term number. Check it against the caps in 67-6504.
• Search the minutes for conflict disclosures. Note who recused, on what, and who did not.
• Find out which decisions the commission makes and which it only recommends. The answer is usually in a table in the zoning ordinance.

Research angle

• Idaho Code 67-6504: How a planning and zoning commission is created and what it can and cannot decide.
• Idaho Code 67-6506: The conflict of interest rule for officials.
• Idaho Code 67-6520: Hearing examiners and what they can be given.
• Eacret v. Bonner County: The Idaho Supreme Court decision on legislative versus quasi-judicial decisions.
• Idaho Association of Counties training slides: A plain overview of planning and zoning for local officials.