← Back to The Legislative Docket
CASE 2019-228

S.B. 228 · 2019 General Session

The Blueprint — Public Infrastructure District Act

Nearly every financing-district story The Weber County Hive has documented — Nordic Village, Eden Crossing, West Weber, Sage Creek, Mount Ogden, dozens more — traces back to this single 2019 law. It created a new form of local government that can issue its own bonds, set its own budget, and answer to almost no one once it's formed.

Chief Sponsor: Sen. Dan McCay House Sponsor: Rep. James Dunnigan Effective: May 14, 2019 Became Law

What the bill actually does

S.B. 228 created the Public Infrastructure District (PID) as a distinct kind of Utah local government — a special-purpose district that can be formed inside a proposed development, governed by its own board of trustees, with the authority to levy assessments on property inside its boundary and issue its own bonds to pay for infrastructure (roads, water, sewer, parks) that would otherwise be a developer's up-front cost.

The structural pieces that recur across every PID case this project has documented were all set here in 2019: developer-controlled boards in a district's early years (trustees are typically the landowner or their designees until enough residents move in to hold elections); assessments that run with the land and bind future buyers who had no vote in creating the district; and minimal statutory reporting requirements once a PID is formed and bonded.

The tool, not any one project's use of it

This case file grades the enabling statute itself — the tool PID trustees, developers, and counties across Utah have used ever since — not any single project's execution of it. Those individual stories (Nordic Village's trustee residency question, Eden Crossing's unformed PID, Mount Ogden's board appointments, and others) are documented separately across this project's other repos.

Scale, statewide, as of 2026: 221 PIDs have been formed under this statute; 71 have issued debt; total PID debt outstanding is approximately $5.267 billion — roughly four times the state of Utah's own general obligation bond debt — per the State Auditor's office.

Who built the market this law created

S.B. 228 didn't just create a legal tool — it created a new municipal-finance business line. Sam Sharp and Zach Bishop, then at D.A. Davidson & Co., are credited by their own later employer (Piper Sandler) with having "introduced a new market for special districts in Utah" and "championed the Public Infrastructure District Act in 2019" — the underwriters' own characterization of their role in getting the law passed.

In November 2020, Piper Sandler hired Sharp, Bishop, and four D.A. Davidson colleagues specifically to build its Utah special-district group. Within about a year, that team's Utah PID work totaled $331 million, funding projects for 1,700+ homes and 6,200+ acres — including, per their own press materials, "the first ski resort developed in North America in over 40 years."

By H1 2026, D.A. Davidson and Piper Sandler ranked #1 and #2 senior managers on all Utah municipal bond issuance combined ($706.0M and $621.0M respectively, per Bond Buyer/LSEG data) — the same two firms that built the PID market in the first place still dominating it seven years later.

The unresolved constitutional question

This isn't a claim that PIDs are illegal — courts nationally have broadly upheld tax-increment and special-assessment financing under "public purpose" doctrine, and PIDs are structured as assessments for a defined benefit rather than a general property tax, which is the standard basis for why uniform-taxation challenges don't typically succeed. Presented here as an open question next to the documented facts, not a verdict:

The "PIDs only cost those inside the boundary" defense — that a PID's assessment is legally contained to its own district — is true as far as it goes, but doesn't address the collective side: when a PID diverts growth revenue that would otherwise have gone to a county, school district, or fire district, that revenue loss is a budget hole filled by raising rates on everyone else in that broader district, not contained to the PID boundary at all.

The real-world stress test: Wohali

Wohali Land Estates (a luxury golf resort PID in Coalville, Summit County) filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy August 8, 2025 — the first real Utah PID bankruptcy this statute has produced. Its PID had issued roughly $35M in debt; total project debt grew past $100M by November 2025 court hearings, with 40+ creditors including Summit County and Coalville City themselves named in the case.

The structural finding State Auditor Tina Cannon flagged: Wohali's PID bond had to be paid before its outside commercial lenders — meaning a failing PID-financed project can take on more debt during bankruptcy, "creating a new problem within a bankruptcy," in her words. A 2026 law has since clarified that cities and counties aren't directly liable for PID debt, but the State Auditor still requires Coalville to list the PID's debt on the city's own financial statements — a litigation-risk asterisk that doesn't disappear just because direct liability doesn't attach.

Graded against the collective rubric

PowerConcentrated in developer-controlled boards during a district's formative years; residents bound by assessments set before they had a vote
TransparencyMinimal statutory reporting once formed and bonded; no statewide public disclosure requirement existed until S.B. 206 (2026) created one
Financial AccountabilityWohali's bankruptcy shows the debt-priority structure can expose cities/counties to real financial-statement and litigation risk even without direct liability
Environmental ImpactNot established — the enabling statute itself is environmentally neutral; impact depends entirely on what each individual PID finances
Community ImpactGrowth-revenue diversion documented, in other case files, as a real cost to the broader non-PID community — not contained to the district boundary as often claimed
D

Graded on the tool it created — its own government, own bonds, and minimal ongoing visibility once formed — not on any single project's execution of it.

Sources