Opinion ID: 2074612
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Decision Must be Based on Environmental Impact of the Proposed Development

Text: ¶ 30. Exactly where this point leads is not clear from this Court's decision, but it is very clear from the Board's majority [5] decision. In its reconsideration decision, the Board wrote: Likewise, the Environmental Board is empowered to regulate property based upon its use, not the identity or the specific characteristics or attributes of its users. Thus, the Board cannot make a distinction between the Harvey and Owen Houses with their long-term residents, and other group homes, which might be identical in all relevant physical and operational respects to the Harvey and Owen Houses, but whose residents stay only a few weeks or months before, for whatever reasons, they move out. (Emphasis supplied.) Earlier, in footnote 3 of that decision, the Board said of the distinction discussed above that such a distinction would be irrational, something the Board must avoid. ¶ 31. If these words appeared in a decision striking down Rule 2(M) as beyond the rule-making authority of the Board or impermissibly arbitrary, I could understand their presence. Their usage in a decision interpreting the rule demonstrates a Board at war with itself. The distinction between intended temporary occupancy and intended permanent occupancy is exactly the distinction drawn in the Environmental Board Rule and it is that distinction that the Board is now calling irrational. While we have no record of why the Board adopted this distinction in the first place, we must assume that it found a difference in environmental impacts. Without even attempting to understand why it drew that distinction in the first place, it is trashing its own work. ¶ 32. If the Board wants to strike down its own regulation, the effect of its action in this case, it at least has to give notice to persons who will rely on the language of the rule. This case is a good example of why we should not accept repeal-by-interpretation, as occurred here. S-S Corp. concluded that it did not need Act 250 permits for the Harvey and Owen Houses, accepted large federal grants for their construction and began construction on the Owen House before it was finally informed that a state official had months earlier sought an official opinion on whether an Act 250 permit was needed. Anyone who read the regulations would conclude that dwellings intended to be residences for persons for twenty years or more are not intended to be occupied on a temporary basis. Persons should not be put in the position of making investment decisions on the risk that the Board will unpredictably change the rules without warning. If the Board is to abandon the distinction it made in the rule, it must do so by rule making.