An amendment to the Tennessee Regional Planning Enabling Statutes was passed by the General Assembly in 2018, authorizing, without any explanation or definition, a regional planning commission to grant variances for subdivision applications. Tenn. Code. Ann. § 13-3-402(d). The language of the amendment is very simple although it may raise more questions than it answers:
A regional planning commission may grant variances to subdivision regulations, if such variances are adopted at a public meeting of the commission.
There are no standards provided as to when variances might be appropriately granted; the only requirement appears to be that the variances must be approved at a public meeting, and since virtually all meetings of regional planning commissions are open to the public, that element should be easy to overcome.
Are these variances supposed to be the same as the variances which a zoning board is empowered to grant? See Tenn. Code. Ann. § 13-7-109(3). No, because the variances which the zoning board may grant are to alleviate difficulties caused by the enforcement of zoning regulations, not subdivision regulations.
But do the same standards apply? In order to obtain a zoning variance, the applicant must show that the property is exceptionally narrow, shallow, or shaped, or subject to exceptional topographic conditions or other extraordinary and exceptional situations or conditions. Are those requirements also applicable in the case of variances from subdivision regulations?
It is impossible to tell. Perhaps the Planning Commission is supposed to adopt its own standards by which to judge whether a variance is appropriate. That would allow all kinds of different types of variances to be granted by different planning commissions across the state.
I should mention that most Planning Commissions have over the last 20 years or so been granting variances to the subdivision regulations in any event. I assume that the statute was passed because somewhere in Tennessee a case was appealed and the local court may have concluded that the planning commission did not have the power to grant a variance since it was not enabled by state statute. I am sympathetic to that argument; from my perspective, planning commissions don't have any independent power which is not vested by a statute adopted by the General Assembly. That has not however stopped planning commissions from granting variances to the subdivision regulations.
On the other hand, since the Planning Commissions pretty much adopt their own subdivision regulations, the members of the commissions would be in the best position to judge how those regulations should be administered and enforced, and if they feel that a variance is appropriate, perhaps that's not too much of a stretch.
I always think back to the Hamilton Bank versus Williamson County Planning Commission case where the US Supreme Court at least seemed to imply that the planning commission itself could grant variances to their subdivision regulations and that one of the reasons that the case was not ripe for constitutional consideration was the fact that no variance had been applied for. But since planning commissions in Tennessee back then did not have any power to grant variances, at least not enabled by state statute, the Supreme Court's decision in that regard seemed a little amiss.
In any event, this amendment is interesting to consider, and also to consider that a similar amendment was not passed regarding municipal planning commissions. Why not? Since the General Assembly saw fit to enable variances for regional planning commissions but not for municipal planning commissions, does that imply that municipal planning commissions do not have the power to grant such variances? It's hard to know. Certainly we should expect that drafting these statutory provisions would be held to a higher standard; if a variance is proposed for regional planning commission, wouldn't it make sense to check to see if the same provision would be appropriate in the context of municipal planning commissions?
Frankly, from my standpoint, it's not clear to me that planning commissions of any type should be permitted to grant variances. But assuming that regional planning commissions are given the power, then surely municipal corporations should have been enabled to do so at the same time.
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