Attorney General Does Not Certify Initiative Petition to Amend Comprehensive Permit Statute - September 7, 2011

On September 7th, Attorney General Martha Coakley announced her decision not to certify a new initiative petition to substantially amend the Comprehensive Permit Law. 

If put before the voters and passed, the petition would have reduced the affordable housing safe harbor of each municipality from 10 percent to 3 percent of its housing stock, eliminated limited dividend organizations from the statute, and changed the law so that comprehensive permits could no longer override one particular form of local rule, a local wetland bylaw. 

Under the Massachusetts Constitution, a petition cannot be certified to appear on the ballot that is “substantially the same as any measure which has been qualified for submission or submitted to the people at either of the two preceding biennial state elections.”

In a brief prepared by Mintz Levin’s Paul Wilson, Jon Cosco and Ben Tymann on a pro bono basis, CHAPA, MACDC, MAHA, JALSA and the Lawyers Clearinghouse argued that the 2011 petition would substantially eliminate the Comprehensive Permit Law’s effectiveness and strip it of several defining characteristics, making it substantially the same as Question 2 on the 2010 ballot.  The Attorney General agreed that the petition is substantially the same and refused to certify it.  The decision means that petitioners will not be able to move forward with signature gathering to try to place the petition on the 2012 ballot.  There is an opportunity to appeal the Attorney General decision.