Transcript for the Piece Audio version of No Faith in Zoning

HOST: Johnson County is one of six in Wyoming that don’t have any zoning. It's a place unfriendly to government controls… and arguably, you don’t need zoning when the nearest neighbors are a mile away and you’ve known them since you were born. That’s how life was in Johnson County…and how life still is for much of it. But as sure as the Big Horn Mountains rise to the west, there are outsiders moving in to enjoy them. And now the locals are starting to think that a little government control might not be so bad. Wyoming Public Radio’s Addie Goss reports.

AG: Bob Ruby's been out on the land since dawn. It's now eight o'clock at night, and he just got in. Almost immediately, the phone rings – a work call.

257.2 Does this boy have any experience with sheep? Yeah, is this, can he ride horses?

Ruby grew up on this ranch in the foothills of the Big Horns. He says he remembers when the land was ag and ag only. Now, he lives in a changing county – one whose ridges are speckled by rooftops. Working pastures have been replaced by developments.

258.3 You know whether it be what Cloud Peak Subdivision is now used to be George Limmer's, what over here at the Bear Tooth used to be Bill Ritchie's, I mean yeah, what used to be George Taylor's is now Emerald Park Subdivision, and those are all within four miles of us.

This development isn't rampant, but it's something. The county has approved 52 subdivisions since the year 2000, with about 550 lots between them. Ruby, who's on the county planning commission, says without zoning, there's not much the county can do about where these subdivisions are or how they look.

258.4 We can probably say we don't like it, but we cannot stop it.

Zoning has received a no vote in Johnson County for decades. This is a place with a fierce adherence to private property rights. Jim Hicks, the former owner of the Buffalo Bulletin, remembers the scene at one public meeting on zoning over twenty years ago.

255.2 It reminded you of a lynch mob almost, they were really, really angry and up in arms, it was a communist plot as far as they were concerned.

251.2 There were heated discussions, and one group was allowed to stand up and shout at the other... to this day a lot of people don't want to come back because of that.

Rob Yingling is the Johnson County planner. He moved here from Maryland – something locals make a point of mentioning. But Yingling strikes an even tone on this issue. He's drafting zoning regulations for the county, because he's sure there'll be an appetite for them some day. But he's not holding his breath.

250.2 My pitch to the commissioners years ago was you may not be in political favor zoning right now, but let me get the regulations written, get the tool in the toolbox, and when you come to the conclusion that we need zoning we don't need to spend another four years getting it done, we can dust it off and let it go.

Yingling's regulations would prohibit egregious neighbor behavior and safety issues: noxious fumes, leaking septic systems. They'll concentrate development around Buffalo and Kaycee, and prevent what are known as "rogue" subdivisions: development so far from town that they tax fire, police, and road crews. But even those basic regulations have not won all hearts and minds.

253.2 I struggle with the concept of zoning.

Gerald Fink chairs the Johnson County Board of Commissioners, which would have to approve any zoning regulations. Fink says the more subdivisions people see, the more they tend to approve of zoning.

253.4 But that comes at a price.

Fink worries that zoning would prevent ranchers from selling their land to developers if they need to. And that one scenario is at the heart of the zoning debate in a county this pretty. As ranching gets more expensive.... the land beneath the rancher's feet gets more valuable by the year. Neil Schuman ranches outside Buffalo.

256.4.2 The price of land now it's not economically feasible to raise cattle on it.

Schuman says long-time landowners here are living with a kind of paradox. On the one hand, they hate to see their home changing. On the other, their beliefs in freedom and private property rights prevent them from doing something about it.

256.6 Most people here I think want to take their chances on not having regulations rather than have the regulations and sorry that they have them.

But because there is still so much open space here... outsiders still find in Johnson County the vistas, the rural living, that they can't find somewhere else. Residents here have more to lose because they haven’t lost it yet.

There are some here who want the government to do something to prevent change. One of them is Bob Ruby, the rancher on the planning commission. But he says, when he's honest with himself, he knows that no law – no county law, no state law – will keep this place from being touched. He knows it will fill in. It's prime open land, he says. Agriculture kept it that way.

258.7 Everything, everything has a life. Whether it be a tepee ring, some cairn that some caveman built out there the ranch on top of this little hill, and somebody came by and got his pickup stuck and he had to haul the rocks off and put them in the bottom there of the ruts to get it jacked up to drive off of it. Everything has a life. And for me to try and set here, or a planning commission to set here and tell you what is good for this land 150 years from now.... I don't know that that's fair to do.

Fair, he says, or even possible.

For Wyoming Public Radio, I'm Addie Goss.

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