Rental housing ordinance to live on, with modification

LARAMIE — A local rental company has dropped its appeal to a court decision on a new housing code in Laramie. 
Bell Leasing, LLC brought a lawsuit against the city of Laramie earlier this year after the city passed an ordinance requiring landlords meet a set of basic habitability standards for each of their properties. The ordinance requires landlords to pay a $20 annual fee for each of their properties and follow a set of standards that include items such as providing functioning heat, smoke detectors and plumbing on their properties. 
Bell Leasing claimed the city did not have the authority to create such an ordinance. 
In an initial judgment issued Aug. 1, Albany County 2nd Judicial District Judge Tori Kricken upheld this ability. In a partial win for Bell Leasing, she also ruled the methods of enforcing this ordinance to be unconstitutionally vague in their wording. Bell Leasing then appealed the decision to the Wyoming Supreme Court, before dropping the appeal on Sept. 22.
This leaves the previous judgment intact, meaning the city of Laramie will enforce the habitability standards when they go into effect Jan. 1. 
In the meantime, the city will update the ordinance to be in line with the judge’s ruling, City Attorney Robert Southard said.
He explained that while the city did have the option to appeal the ruling deeming the ordinance’s enforcement procedures unconstitutional, it chose not to in an effort to save time and minimize risk. 
The reason Bell Leasing dropped its appeal is unclear. Court documents did not offer details, and Bell Leasing staff deferred a request to comment to the law firm Brown & Hiser, LLC. The firm has not responded to the Laramie Boomerang’s multiple requests for comment since Monday. 
“It’s unusual that they dismissed their appeal,” Southard said. “Since (the city is) not appealing, we need to conform the ordinance to the judge’s ruling, so that’s what we’re going to be working on.” 
Ambiguous language in the section of the ordinance outlining enforcement procedures left confusion over what exactly would constitute a violation of the ordinance and whether these violations would be civil or criminal in nature, Kricken wrote in the initial judgment. 
“This lack of clarity is precisely the type of situation which could impermissibly delegate basic policy matters to policemen, judges and juries for resolution on an ad hoc and subjective basis, with the attendant dangers of arbitrary and discriminatory application,” Kricken wrote of one section of the ordinance related to compliance with an enforcement notice from the city manager. 
The city plans to amend the ordinance to resolve these issues, Southard said. 
Much like the original ordinance, three readings of any amendments must be approved by Laramie City Council. It is the city’s goal to complete that process before the Jan. 1 enforcement date, Southard said. 
“We were hoping to be in the position that we’re in right now, which is the only thing we would (change) would have to do with the enforcement provisions of the ordinance,” he said.
 
This story was published on Sept. 29, 2022.