Kansas Supreme Court decides Finney County dispute

TOPEKA — The Kansas Supreme Court issued an opinion Friday ruling that the Finney County Commission has the authority to delegate land-use permit decisions to a zoning board of appeals as long as local actions do not conflict with state law.

The opinion, written by Judge Dan Biles, arose from a dispute that arose in 2021 when Huber Sand filed an application with the Finney County Zoning Board of Appeals for a conditional use permit to operate a sand and gravel quarry under regulations adopted by the county commission.

More than 100 people have filed protest petitions opposing the development on 177 acres southeast of Pierceville.

The zoning board approved a 2-1 permit for a quarry on land zoned for agriculture. Finney County landowner Brian Price and American Warrior, a company with oil and gas leases near the proposed quarry, filed a lawsuit.

The Finney County District Court sided with Huber Sand and the county commission, but American Warrior appealed to the Kansas Court of Appeals. The appeals court, by a 2-1 vote, reversed the district court’s ruling.

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that a majority of the Court of Appeals judges made an erroneous decision and upheld the original ruling by District Court Judge Wendell Wurst.

Biles’s opinion for the Supreme Court held that a county’s zoning authority could be limited by state law through the concept of precedence, which occurred when the Kansas Legislature reserved exclusive jurisdiction to the state. However, he wrote that Kansas law contained “no such express statement of precedence for conditional use permits.”

“The (Court of Appeals) majority critically failed to provide a plain, textual interpretation of the statute and regulations,” Biles said.

Instead, the judge wrote that the Court of Appeal had considered two previous cases from 2003 and 2008 that should not have been considered applicable and “unfairly extended its rulings to the current controversy.”

The Supreme Court decision confirmed that the legislature granted cities and counties the authority to make zoning regulations without state interference, provided that local decisions do not conflict with the Act on Planning, Spatial Development and Land Division in Cities and Counties.

Using this authority, Finney County adopted its own local regulations and delegated the issuance of conditional use permits to the Finney County Board of Zoning Appeals.