Opinion ID: 2339947
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Description of Act

Text: The Act provides a statutory method designed to enable every municipality in the state to determine and to provide for its fair share of its region's need for low and moderate income housing. It creates a Council to achieve this result. During the first seven months after its formation, [5] the Council is to divide the state into housing regions and determine, for each region (as well as for the state itself), the present and prospective need for low and moderate income housing, § 7a and b. It is also required during that period to adopt criteria and guidelines that will enable municipalities to determine their fair share of their region's housing need. § 7c. The Act contemplates that these criteria and guidelines, applied generally to all municipalities in the state, will result in a tentative fair share number for each municipality, calculated by the municipality, and thereafter adjusted by the municipality in accordance with various specific factors set forth in section 7c(2). One of those factors is the consistency of the fair share determination with the SDRP, the overall master plan of the State. § 7c(2)(e). That provision, when read together with this new State planning act, L. 1985, c. 395, contemplates the use of a statewide plan that will indicate where development and redevelopment is to take place or is to be encouraged, and where it is to be limited, including the appropriate kinds of development. The plan, insofar as the Mount Laurel doctrine is concerned, can be thought of as probably largely replacing the initial concept of developing municipalities and the subsequent use of the State Development Guide Plan in determining the locus of the Mount Laurel fair share obligation. [6] The power of the Council is extremely broad. While it is required, in performing these functions, to consider pertinent research studies, government reports, decisions of other branches of government, implementation of the State Development and Redevelopment Plan ... and public comment, § 7, it is not restricted to any particular approach to these matters nor to any school of thought espoused by groups of experts. It is free to look at the matter and decide it based on its own determination of appropriate policy, given the purposes of the Act. The Act contemplates that the Council will periodically adjust its regional need figures. [7] In other words, the Council is not required to make a static determination by August 1, 1986, but rather the first determination of the major facts and standards that will enable municipalities to determine their fair share at that time, the Council's determination to be revised from time to time in accordance with changing needs and changing circumstances. § 7. The Act contemplates that the information and criteria adopted by the Council at any given time will result in municipal fair share ordinances, revision of which should be considered after six years. That is the same period (six years) used in the Municipal Land Use Law requiring periodic revisions of municipal master plans, N.J.S.A. 40:55D-89, and the period used by this Court in Mount Laurel II, during which a zoning ordinance complying with the Mount Laurel obligation would be protected from attack. 92 N.J. at 291-92. Any municipality (assuming it has filed a resolution of participation, a housing element, and a proposed fair share housing ordinance implementing the housing element, § 9a) may petition the Council for substantive certification of the housing element and ordinances. § 13. The housing element shall contain an analysis demonstrating that it will provide ... a realistic opportunity [for its fair share of low and moderate income housing], and the municipality shall establish that its land use and other relevant ordinances have been revised to incorporate provisions for low and moderate income housing. § 11a. [8] The Council is required to issue substantive certification if no objection to certification is filed with it within 45 days of publication of notice of the municipality's petition and if it finds that the fair share plan is consistent with the rules and criteria adopted by the Council and makes the achievement of the municipality's fair share of low and moderate income housing realistically possible. §§ 14 to 14b. The municipality is tobb adopt all of its proposed ordinances within 45 days after it receives substantive certification. § 14. If there are any objections to substantive certification, the Act mandates a mediation and review process. § 15a. If the objections cannot be resolved by this mediation process involving the Council, the municipality, and the objectors, the matter is referred to an Administrative Law Judge, heard as a contested matter, and expedited. § 15c. The final determination on the issue of substantive certification is then made by the Council after receipt of the Administrative Law Judge's initial decision. Id. These administrative proceedings achieve two main goals. First, those municipalities that petition the Council and thereafter receive substantive certification will promptly (within 45 days, § 14) enact the proposed ordinances and other measures that led to substantive certification, measures that presumably will achieve a realistic opportunity for the construction of the municipalities' fair share of low and moderate income housing. Second, in any lawsuit attacking a municipality's ordinances that have received substantive certification as not in compliance with the Mount Laurel constitutional obligation, the plaintiff will be required to prove such noncompliance by clear and convincing evidence, and the Council shall be made a party to any such lawsuit. § 17a. The difficulties facing any plaintiff attempting to meet such a burden of proof are best understood by noting the variety of methodologies that can be used legitimately to determine regional need and fair share as well as the many different ways in which a realistic opportunity to achieve that fair share may be provided. If the Council conscientiously performs its duties, including determining regional need and evaluating whether the proposed adjustments and ordinances provide the requisite fair share opportunity, a successful Mount Laurel lawsuit should be a rarity. There is therefore a broad range of municipal action that will withstand challenge, given this burden of proof. Substantive certification becomes a most important goal for any municipality concerned with the potential result of Mount Laurel litigation brought against it. By using the procedures of the statute, the municipality will obtain the benefit of the Council's determination of both regional need and standards for determining its fair share of that need. By complying with the requirements for substantive certification the municipality will be relieved of the uncertainties and potential burdens of Mount Laurel litigation. The fact that municipalities are not required by this legislation to petition for substantive certification is somewhat less significant than appears at first glance. Substantive certification is of considerable importance. If the municipality fails to adopt a resolution of participation within four months of the effective date of the Act, and then later fails to file its fair share plan and housing element with the Council prior to the institution of Mount Laurel litigation, it may lose the benefit of substantive certification. § 9b. It will be subject to litigation and the remedies provided by Mount Laurel II, the replacement of which by the administrative procedures of the Council was one of the primary purposes of the Act. § 3. It can therefore fairly be assumed that most municipalities that have a potentially significant Mount Laurel obligation will file their petition for substantive certification, their housing element, and fair share housing ordinance within a reasonable period of time after the Council's adoption of its criteria and guidelines. [9] Thus, what appears at first to be simply an option available to municipalities is more realistically a procedure that practically all municipalities with a significant Mount Laurel obligation will follow, both to determine and to satisfy their Mount Laurel obligation. Furthermore, it is a procedure that may be concluded much more quickly than ordinary Mount Laurel litigation since the time periods provided for are extremely short. For instance, the Administrative Law Judge is required to render a decision within 90 days of transmittal of the matter as a contested case to the Office of Administrative Law by the Council, § 15c; and the municipality is required to adopt its fair share housing ordinance within 45 days of the grant of substantive certification, § 14. While there is the inevitable start-up delay (the Council's criteria and guidelines need not be adopted until August 1, 1986, and the Act allows municipalities five months after the adoption of the criteria to complete the necessary and sometimes time-consuming process of shaping their ordinances and housing elements, § 9a), it is quite possible that once the administrative gears start to move, a very substantial number of municipal fair share plans will be filed, certified, and thereafter adopted. That means, if the Act works according to its apparent intent, that within the not-too-distant future most municipalities subject to Mount Laurel obligations will have conforming ordinances in place providing a realistic opportunity for the construction of their fair share of the region's need for low and moderate income housing. Considering the fact that the Council has the power to refuse substantive certification unless that opportunity is realistic, and the further fact that various financial aids to construction are provided for in the Act, it also means that lower income housing should actually be built. This statutory scheme addresses the main needs delineated in our prior decisions on this matter, namely, the consistency on a statewide basis of the determination of regional need, fair share, and the adequacy of the municipal measures. Furthermore, the decisions and actions by the Council will follow the contours of the SDRP (when completed), explicitly designed for this purpose, among others. Revisions, adjustments, fine tuning  all of the techniques available to an administrative agency  can be implemented on a statewide basis as experience teaches the Council what works and what does not. The risk that discordant development might result if Mount Laurel cases continue to be decided by the courts is minimized by the considerations noted above, which lead to the conclusion that most municipalities will use the Council's procedures. Furthermore, the judiciary, assuming the statutory plan functions reasonably effectively, will be responsive to the actions of the Council and conform its decisions in this field to the Council's various determinations. There are other significant provisions of the Act. One allows municipalities to share Mount Laurel obligations by entering into regional contribution agreements. § 12. This device requires either Council or court approval to be effective. Under this provision, one municipality can transfer to another, if that other agrees, a portion, under 50%, of its fair share obligation, the receiving municipality adding that to its own. The Act contemplates that the first municipality will contribute funds to the other, § 12d, presumably to make the housing construction possible and to eliminate any financial burden resulting from the added fair share. The provisions seem intended to allow suburban municipalities to transfer a portion of their obligation to urban areas ( see § 2g, evincing a legislative intent to encourage construction, conversion, or rehabilitation of housing in urban areas), thereby aiding in the construction of decent lower income housing in the area where most lower income households are found, provided, however, that such areas are within convenient access to employment opportunities, and conform to sound comprehensive regional planning. § 12c. Probably the most significant provision involved in these appeals is section 16, dealing with the transfer of Mount Laurel litigation to the Council. Section 16b requires that all such litigation commenced after the effective date of the Act (or no more than 60 days before that date) shall, on motion of any party, be transferred automatically to the Council. All of the procedures and determinations mentioned above leading to substantive certification would be triggered and thereafter take place. [10] The courts, in other words, would have nothing more to do with the determination and satisfaction of the Mount Laurel obligation unless and until either a challenge was subsequently made to that substantive certification, or such certification was denied. As for Mount Laurel litigation commenced more than 60 days before the effective date of the Act, section 16 provides that all of those cases, on motion of any party to the litigation, are required to be transferred to the Council, unless such transfer would result in a manifest injustice to any party to the litigation. It is the meaning of this latter clause and the phrase manifest injustice that is one of the main issues before us. The last provision of the Act we shall describe concerns the builder's remedy. The Act prohibits any court from imposing a builder's remedy on a municipality until five months after the Council adopts its criteria and guidelines. § 28. If the Council takes all the time allowed under the Act for that purpose (it has until August 1, 1986, to adopt those criteria and guidelines), the builder's remedy moratorium would expire on January 1, 1987. That date is also the deadline for municipalities to file their housing element and fair share housing ordinance with the Council without the risk of a Mount Laurel lawsuit. § 9. This moratorium against court issuance of a builder's remedy does not apply to any litigation commenced before January 20, 1983, the date of our Mount Laurel II opinion, nor to any litigation in which there has been a final judgment with all right to appeal exhausted. Id. Since one of the issues claimed by some of the parties as being most important in determining manifest injustice is the delay said to be caused in the satisfaction of the Mount Laurel obligation by transfer to the Council, we should point out the various timetables that are relevant to that claim. Measured from today, a matter transferred to the Council will presumably result in a conforming municipal housing element and fair share zoning ordinances around September of 1987; [11] if the Council promulgates its criteria and guidelines in less than seven months, that outside period would become that much shorter. If we are measuring, however, from a date after the Council has its guidelines and criteria in place, the time it would take from the filing of a petition for substantive certification to the adoption of a conforming fair share housing ordinance could be considerably shorter than the time for Mount Laurel litigation, which seems to require at least one-and-a-half to two years' time for conclusion. If the critical issue is the amount of time it will take to litigate a particular Mount Laurel case, resulting in a conforming ordinance, one must obviously look at its present status. If a compliance hearing is about to be held and the parties are close to agreement, the matter might be concluded in a month. On the other hand, if no fair share hearing has been held and there has been little discovery, a year might still be required. It seems fair to conclude that the resolution of many of these matters before us would occur more quickly if transfer were denied. None of the foregoing calculations takes into account the effect of any appeals nor the probability that such appeals would be forthcoming.