October 5, 2016 at 2:54 p.m.
The Democratic scam on local control
The Democratic scam on local control
Or both, like Hillary Clinton.
If it's the former, they should be deemed as suffering from Chronic Liberal Disease (CDL) and quarantined from public office by the voters; if it's the latter, well, OK, the same thing should happen.
Take the recent Democratic position on local control, for example. Wisconsin Democrats just love to love local control these days, especially when it comes to shoreland zoning regulations, and, to hear them tell it, it's the Republicans who are taking local control away.
Just recently here at the newspaper, state Sen. Jon Erpenbach (D-Middleton) said the Republicans did just that when they prohibited counties from being more restrictive than the state.
"If a county wants to go above and beyond (state regulations) for a particular body of water when it comes to shoreland zoning regulation, the county should be able to do that and now they can't," Erpenbach said. "So that's an example of local control being taken away and given, in this case, to the DNR."
Well, OK. But what about when a county determines that a state regulation is too restrictive for a particular lake, or for the county itself? Should local control still be the gold standard, and should the county be able to enact a less restrictive ordinance?
No way, Erpenbach says: "The state, on a lot of things, basically sets the floor. At the very least, you need to do this, this, this, and this. If you want to do more, then fine, go ahead, but at the very least you need to do that."
The problem is, as Erpenbach says, one size does not fit all, and that's why counties should be able to enact less restrictive regulations as well as more restrictive regulations. The "this, this, this, and this" the state is telling a county to do might be scientifically unnecessary to protect a particular resource, and thus unconstitutionally restrictive of property rights, not to mention damaging to the economy.
Take the state's impervious surface limits, for example. It most certainly is prudent for the state to impose stringent impervious surface limits in watersheds where connected impervious coverage is approaching the threshold where water quality begins to degrade, which is in the neighborhood of 8-10 percent, to use the DNR's own numbers.
Such polluted areas already exist in southern and southeastern Wisconsin, which thus warrant a rigorous state standard, for corralling impervious surface concentrations can improve water quality.
But why impose those same restrictions on northern Wisconsin, where not one watershed is more than 2 percent developed, and where population and development activity has been declining, not increasing? Why impose the most stringent regulations on a poor area when impervious surface coverage would not imperil water quality for at least 400 years, if ever, even if the pace of development doubled and no standard was in place?
Instead, the state, in its infinite wisdom, allows relaxed standards in already polluted high-density urban areas, but continues to wallop the undeveloped North with the most onerous regulatory burden.
Where is the fairness in that? Where is the local control? Where are the advocates of local control?
And where were those voices for local control when the DNR, during the administration of Gov. Jim Doyle, was hammering counties who, armed with sound science, pleaded for the ability to be less restrictive in the early and mid 2000s? Where was Erpenbach?
Where were they when the DNR rammed through onerous and unnecessary regulations, changing shoreland language from counties "may" do "this, this, this, and this," to use Erpenbach's words, to 'shall' do "this, this, this, and this."
Legislative Democrats never said a word about local control then. They never objected to letting the DNR take complete power away from counties, ending their ability to govern themselves. That arrogant and dictatorial approach is in fact what created the backlash that resulted in the Legislature's recent legislation to restore property rights.
In the end, even Erpenbach concedes that minimum standards aren't perfect, can harm innocent citizens, and can violate their property rights: "Whatever regulations we pass or whatever we tell the DNR to do, there's going to be a couple of examples of 'Wait a minute, that law screws this place ....'"
So Erpenbach does call for flexibility, but even in those instances he does not call for local control to address the inequity but would give the power to loosen the regulation to agency bureaucrats:
"I would love to give agencies more flexibility. I would love to give public employees more flexibility to do their jobs. In other words, if they say, 'This is what the law says, this is the flexibility I have within the law, and this is how I can apply it to this situation,' if that makes things better in the sense that DOT can now deal with Minocqua on Hwy. 51, or if they are required to take into account what local units of government have to say, I think things would be better."
Well, no they wouldn't, not if history is any guide. We have two words for Erpenbach when it comes to what DNR employees would do if given such 'flexibility': Liesa Nesta. Until she was transferred by the DNR, this agent of evil terrorized northern Wisconsin property owners for years, inventing laws on the spot, changing state policies on a whim, and generally making life miserable for people.
And little of it was based on what was good for the environment; it was mostly about maintaining aesthetic beauty, which apparently she alone could judge.
The answer to all this is, precisely because one size does not fit all, there should be no statewide shoreland minimum regulations that must be imposed rigidly in every unincorporated area (cities are another issue but we'll leave that for another day).
The state should provide suggestions, guidelines for minimums, and even model ordinances, but in the end the code should once again say that counties 'may' adopt those regulations, not 'shall.' And then counties could be less restrictive or more restrictive as they see fit, so long as they don't run afoul of the state constitution's mandate to protect the public trust rights in natural resources and its equal mandate to protect property rights.
Neighboring Minnesota works somewhat along these lines. The state has minimum regulations, to be sure, but it also allows also local governments to be more restrictive and, as the case may be, less restrictive when the situation calls for it.
Minnesota allows local governments to depart from regulatory conformity and to choose implementation flexibility for many reasons, including in areas where shorelands have been developed with an assortment of urban land uses for many years, in cities with central business districts located within shorelands, in counties or portions of counties with topography or vegetation characteristics that would make use of particular minimum state standards impractical, and in areas that have not had, and do not anticipate, much development activity, such as would and should be the case in northern Wisconsin.
Sometimes more restrictive regulations are required in one area in exchange for less restrictive regulation in others. It's part of the process of negotiation and compromise, and of a realistic assessment that one size never fits all. Some places simply need more restrictions; others, less.
How all that would be structured is debatable. Counties must not be allowed to create gated lake refuges for the wealthy in the name of protecting the resource any more than they should be allowed to despoil the environment in the name of property rights.
The important point here is, the Democrats are running a scam when they talk about local control. Read the fine print, and local control to them always means one thing: the local government can become more restrictive, but it never can be allowed to be less restrictive, no matter what the science says.
Local control is only useful to Democrats when it adds to the matrix of government regulations, not when it would diminish it.
For years Democrats have used this trope to hand unbridled power to the DNR and to its allies on overreaching county boards. Last year legislative Republicans stepped in to the stop the unconstitutional overreach, as was their responsibility as state elected officials.
Yes, local control is important, and, yes, one size does not fit all, but when it comes to being more or less restrictive, local control needs to be a two-way street, not a one-way railroad.
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