Agricultural lands: cancellation of Williamson Act contracts.

Existing law authorizes a landowner to petition a county board or supervisors or a city council for cancellation of any Williamson Act contract for all or part of the subject land. The board or council is authorized to grant tentative approval for cancellation of a contract if it finds that cancellation is in the public interest. For these purposes, the board or council is required to find that other public concerns substantially outweigh the objectives of the Williamson Act and that either there is no proximate noncontracted land that is both available and suitable for the use to which it is proposed the contracted land be put, or that development of the contracted land would provide more contiguous patterns of urban development than development of proximate noncontracted land. This bill would establish a rebuttable presumption that where a federally recognized Indian tribe has petitioned for a contract cancellation that tribal cultural centers, infrastructure, and housing are alternative uses that are public concerns that substantially outweigh the objectives of the act and that for tribal cultural centers, infrastructure, and housing, land contiguous to existing tribal land would provide more contiguous patterns of urban development than development of proximate noncontracted land.