September 28, 2016 at 2:53 p.m.
Local control vs. local liberty
Local control vs. local liberty
Anyway, a new report from the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance sheds some light on growing tensions between the state's counties and the state itself. County officials are frustrated by more mandates and less funding to implement those mandates, not to mention with levy limits on property taxes.
We've also seen county officials become irritated by the state's clamping down on their ability to enact shoreland zoning laws and other regulations that are stricter than the state's, particularly on individual bodies of water.
Much of the latter movement has been laid at the doorstep of Republicans, which has some people scratching their heads because, after all, Republicans are supposed to favor local control and less government.
So the release of this report and the ongoing festering of shoreland zoning seem to us a good time to revisit some of the basic principles of, and facts about, local government, which may point a way to clarity and an easing of tensions.
First, counties are not sovereign government entities. They exist for two reasons and two reasons only: to implement state policies and to deliver state services.
County officials may grumble that they are limited by statute to doing only what state law allows, while cities and villages may do anything that isn't prohibited by state law, but that's the point: Counties are an administrative arm of the state, nothing more. Their powers live and die at the discretion of the state.
But what about the value of local control? That brings us to the second point. While it may be argued that the government closest to the people best serves the people, it can also be argued that the government that governs least is the best government, and that's not always the local government.
Government is government, and that means it will be prone to excess, no matter whether it's a local government or a state government or the federal government. If you don't think counties are prone to excess, just revisit the stories from the past year about the fast-tracked attempt to build a Taj Mahal of a new highway department in Oneida County. Enough said.
So principle two is, when counties act excessively and overreach their authority, when they violate individual rights, it is the state's duty to step in and stop them. To its residents, a big, out-of-control local government is as bad as a big, out-of-control state government.
In fact, when it comes to the aforementioned shoreland zoning, it was years of local government excess that prompted the state to step in and restrict a county's ability to enact more restrictive regulations. Those excessive restrictions violated the most fundamental private property rights of citizens.
When it doesn't conflict with state policy, local control is a very good thing. It's an important conservative principle because it preserves direct citizen access to government, if not direct democracy, and it provides the most efficient vehicles for both the delivery of services and the hearing of individual grievances.
It allows citizens to effectively petition their government. You're far more likely to make it to the county courthouse to say your piece than you are to travel to Madison to do so.
That said, here's a more important conservative principle: When local control comes into conflict with individual liberty, individual liberty must prevail. Conservatives must be no less vigilant about preserving individual rights at the local level than at higher levels, and indeed we probably have to be more vigilant.
In The Federalist Papers, James Madison warned of the dangers of smaller, more localized governments to violate individual liberties: "The smaller the society, the fewer probably will be the distinct parties and interests composing it; the fewer the distinct parties and interests, the more frequently will a majority be found of the same party; and the smaller the number of individuals composing a majority, and the smaller the compass within which they are placed, the more easily will they concert and execute their plans of oppression. Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other."
Texas state Sen. Konni Burton put it this way when she addressed members of her own party who were singing the local control tune: "Local control is a tool, not a rule, and it's past time Republican state leaders stopped eschewing our rightful place as the promoters and defenders of liberty against all encroachments, even if they come from our own political subdivisions."
A final point about Wisconsin Democrats now yelling about local control. Back in the era of Gov. Jim Doyle's rule, it was the state - namely, the DNR - that was trampling private property rights, sometime ruining lives in the process.
Yet all we heard then from Democrats was that local efforts to be less restrictive than new state regulations - based on rational claims that more restrictive elements needed in polluted areas were not necessary in undeveloped areas where no development was even planned - were the product of excessive local governments who were infringing upon the public trust guarantees of the state constitution.
These days they see no local government excess, but what's good for the goose must be good for the gander. The Democrats are hypocrites and change their tunes about the primacy of local control depending upon the political agenda.
Local governments didn't have their way then, and they shouldn't have their way now when it comes to constitutional rights.
For the most part, the state's so-called suppression of local control over the past six years is a legitimate attempt to restore valid constitutional rights to property owners who have had them stripped away by "distinct parties and interests," to use Madison's phrases, who have captured and use many local governments to "concert and execute their plans of oppression."
These days, in shoreland zoning, the real suppression is often at the county or city level. In the end, as Burton says, local control is a tool, not a rule, and liberty demands it remains that way.
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