House General & Housing adopts H.775 amendment requiring municipal housing-element analysis; roll call shows broad support

The House General & Housing committee adopted draft 3.1 of H.775 on Feb. 20, a strike-all amendment that revises municipal planning language to require municipalities to include an identification and analysis of existing and projected housing needs in the housing element of their municipal plans.

Cameron Woods, Director, Office of Legislative Council, presented the new draft and summarized the key change: "a municipality shall include within the housing element of a municipal plan an identification and analysis of existing and projected housing needs for the projected population of the jurisdiction, including the housing needs for individuals with a disability," and added reporting obligations if a municipality cannot meet regional housing targets under Subdivision 4348(a)(9) of the title referenced in the amendment.

The committee moved and seconded the adoption of draft 3.1 and proceeded to a roll call. During the roll call, nine members verbally recorded "yes" (Elizabeth Burrows; Charlton; Dionora Dodge; Deborah Dolgan; Mary Howard; Emily Krasnow; Ashley Hartley; Joseph Parsons; Art Mahali). Committee members discussed waiting briefly for Representative Saudia, who was disconnected; at the time the running tally discussed was 9 yes, 0 no, 1 absent. The clerk called the role and staff prepared a clean copy for distribution.

Committee members and staff emphasized that the committee's adoption of the amendment is a committee action to send the bill forward; final decisions on appropriations or implementation remain subject to other committees and statutory processes.

The next procedural step noted by the chair was to circulate the final clean copy of the amendment to members and transmit the committee's vote to Appropriations as required for further consideration.