On a 5-2 vote, the City Council in Flagstaff, Arizona, a city of 53,000 people about two hours north of Phoenix, approved an ordinance controlling the size, location, and community impacts of big-box stores.

The action is "important to the long-term vitality of Flagstaff," said Becky Daggett, director of Friends of Flagstaff’s Future, a citizens group that worked for the ordinance’s passage.

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After months of debate on the consequences of big-box development, the Los Angeles City Council this month enacted a law that requires supercenters to undergo an economic impact analysis before being approved.

The law applies to retail stores larger than 100,000 square feet that devote more than 10 percent of their floor space to food and that are seeking to locate in economic assistance zones.

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Calvert County, Maryland, has enacted regulations limiting retail stores to 120,000 square feet in the town of Prince Frederick, 75,000 square feet in three other towns, and 25,000 square feet in the rest of the county.

The regulations block Wal-Mart’s plans to double the size of its 97,000-square-foot Prince Frederick store, the only Wal-Mart in the county, and to build a new supercenter in the town of Dunkirk.

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In May, Vermont became the seventeenth state in the nation to close a loophole that major chain retailers are using to evade paying state income taxes.

The loophole allows multi-state corporations to shift income made at stores in Vermont to subsidiaries in low- or no-tax states like Delaware and Nevada. Income shifted in this manner, although earned in Vermont, is not subject to the state’s corporate income tax.

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"We may look back and think this is one of the most important things we’ve done," said Bristol, Rhode Island, Town Councilor Halsey Herreshoff after the council unanimously passed a formula business ordinance in May. Bristol is a community of 23,000 people about half an hour southeast of Providence.

The ordinance bars formula businesses larger than 2,500 square feet or that take up more than 65 feet of street frontage from locating in Bristol’s historic downtown.

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The city of Bennington, Vermont, has enacted a store size cap ordinance that effectively puts an end to attempts by Wal-Mart to build a giant supercenter.

"The concern has been that if a single retailer becomes too large and too powerful it destroys all competition in the marketplace. And we want to avoid that," said Bennington planning director Dan Monks.

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