Utah lawmakers created the Military Installation Development Authority in 2007 for a narrow purpose: helping installations like Hill Air Force Base put underused land to work. Nearly two decades later, MIDA has become something else — a state-controlled authority that can override local govern ments, sidestep environmental review, divert tax dollars from schools and counties, and operate with little public accountability. It’s time for the Legislature to repeal it. MIDA takes away local control. Once a county consents to a project area, it stops being the zoning authority with real veto power and becomes a negotiating partner it can’t easily walk away from. In Wasatch County, a 40-acre parcel approved in 2011 for a single military recreation hotel has grown into more than 5,000 acres of private ski-resort development around Deer Valley East Village. Box Elder County commissioners felt the same squeeze this spring, saying they approved the 40,000-acre Stratos data center largely because refusing would have cost them any seat at the table at all. MIDA avoids critical environmental review. MIDA’s framework bypasses the standard public zoning hearings a project of this scale would normally face. Residents near Stratos say MIDA was used to fast track the project around ordinary review, with commissioners voting within months and little opportunity for public input. State agencies still issue air and water permits separately, but the local review that would normally shape a project this size never happens. MIDA takes away potential tax revenue. Under MIDA’s tax increment financing, 100% of a county’s new property tax revenue from a project area is redirected to MIDA, not the county, for up to 40 years. School districts keep only 25% of their increment, passing the rest to MIDA. Wasatch County officials themselves acknowledged no government entity in Utah, or possibly the country, had ever attempted this before they agreed to it — four decades of foregone revenue for local schools and services. MIDA also concentrates real financial risk on the public. At Deer Valley East Village alone, MIDA has issued more than $650 million in bonds to build roads, ski lifts and snowmaking systems, banking on projections that the project will generate $30 million annually in its first phase and $108 million at full buildout. That debt is backed by tax increment revenue tied to the success of a private luxury resort, not by the diversified tax base a county would normally rely on. And the original justification for the project — a modest hotel offering discounted rooms to military families — has largely given way to high-end resort infrastructure, a shift critics have called mission drift from MIDA’s stated purpose. MIDA permits development without transparency. The state auditor’s own office calls MIDA a “super” special district, with bonding authority, land-use control and tax-capture power overseen by a staff of roughly 50 responsible for more than 2,000 governmental entities statewide. It took a wave of public outcry over Stratos before the auditor even built a basic public dashboard of MIDA’s finances and history nearly 20 years after MIDA was created. MIDA may have started as a reasonable tool for the military. It has become a way for developers to route around the checks every other project in this state must face. The Legislature should repeal MIDA’s authority and return these decisions to the communities who live with the consequences. Celeste Johnson Candidate for House of Representatives District 59 The post MIDAS touch appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less