Administrative Practice—Local

This paper will discuss both the legal authority of local government to regulate mineral extraction and development, and administrative proceedings before local government pursuant to those regulations.

The discussion will focus on local government control of mining through zoning and related land use regulations. The various States and federal government have generally pre-empted matters such as reclamation, pollution control and taxation of severed minerals. However, local government still exerts primary control over the location and siting of mining as a land use. That control is almost invariably exercised through the zoning power.

The explication on practice and procedure before local government will be limited to local government in Colorado for two reasons: The continuity of presenting case and statutory law will be enhanced if a single jurisdiction is examined and, the issues examined by Colorado courts have a general relevance to local administrative practice outside the state.1

This paper is not meant to be a treatise on the law of zoning. Rather, the goal of the author is to present a framework for identifying and meeting the procedural issues that arise in practice [11-2] before local government. The reader is encouraged to apply this general discussion to the particular rules, statutes and case law of his or her jurisdiction.

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