Bowing to Cheyenne pressure, Teton County softens housing mitigation program. Reactions mixed
JACKSON — People building big — but not super big — homes will no longer owe Teton County affordable housing fees.
After years of political and legal pressure, county commissioners made a key change Tuesday to the county’s housing mitigation program. Now, homeowners building homes smaller than 3,000 square feet will not owe mitigation fees.
Previously, only homeowners building homes smaller than 2,500 square feet were exempt.
“It’s a good tool to house the people who work in this community,” said County Commissioner Luther Propst in a Wednesday interview. “We also want to accommodate the Legislature.”
The move could make the program “more politically palatable,” Propst said.
Changes took effect Wednesday, according to Planning Director Chris Neubecker.
The program, which is backed by “nexus” studies, is based on the idea that development creates jobs for people like plumbers and gardeners who care for the property — and that those people need a place to live. Mitigation fees help subsidize housing development for workers, though developers also have the option to build housing instead of paying.
In 2025, Rep. John Bear, R-Gillette, tacked an amendment onto an unrelated bill that would have eliminated the program. The state Senate killed the bill. Bear introduced a similar bill — HB141 — last session.
But after one of the bill’s primary proponents, conservative activist Rebecca Bextel, got entangled in what became known as the “Checkgate” saga, lawmakers voted down the bill in part because of Bextel’s ties to it.
“It’s doing less of a bad thing,” Bear said in an interview Wednesday. “I think that they need to abandon this type of thinking.”
Bextel, now a candidate for governor, responded to the Jackson Hole Daily’s call with a statement.
“It is unconstitutional to make a landowner pay for someone else’s housing as a term for building their own family a house, no matter what the threshold is for triggering the ‘mitigation fee,’ ” it read in part.
Hoback residents Shelby and Trey Scharp challenged the fees in court in 2025. They got the fees they paid to build their home back but the program survived.
County commissioners picked the 3,000-square-foot threshold because the same figure was used in a bill — called the “Fast Track Permits Act” — that is meant to speed up the home building process approved last session.
The county received $453,914 from mitigation fees for single-family homes in 2025, according to county documents. Of that, $86,588 came from homes between 2,500 and 3,000 square feet.
That said, revenue from mitigation fees varies from year to year. In 2024, the county brought in $1.2 million from mitigation fees.
The town’s program has brought in $293,872 in 2026 from both commercial and residential fees, according to Paul Anthony, the town’s planning director. It brought in $910,585 in 2023. The town does not have the same home size exemption as the county, Anthony said.
That is, in part, because many people who want to build very large homes do so outside of town limits, Mayor Arne Jorgensen said Wednesday. Importantly, many commercial developers actually build units in town rather than paying fees, Jorgensen said.
The town is considering ways to make the program more palatable for lawmakers, Jorgensen said.
“We’re trying to find a middle ground that will address some of the concerns we’ve heard, but also protect the incredible value that the mitigation programs have had in our community,” Jorgensen said.
Rep. Andrew Byron, R-Hoback, said he was pleased to see the county make the change. Byron voted for Bear’s bill to eliminate the program but said he’s met with commissioners to discuss the change.
“I don’t know,” Byron said, when asked how he’d vote if Bear’s HB141 came up again next session and this was the only change the county made to its program.
“It’s a step in the right direction,” Byron said.
This story was published on June 18, 2026.
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