Ever wonder what your city might look like if it was governed solely by the fundamental principles of this country’s founders? The Goldwater Institute has just published a road map to such a vision with its “10 Rights to Restrain Government and Protect Freedom.” While couched in language that invokes the original Bill of Rights, the document outlines a entire new constitution for local governments that would significantly limit their powers to interfere with our lives and protect the right to use our property as we see fit.
Author Nick Dranias paints a picture of how the American view of government — with a separation of powers and hefty barriers to imposing new regulations — simply does not apply to local governments in Arizona. Most power flows downward from a single governing board that frequently usurps authority to dictate the actions of specific individuals. As a result, Dranias argues, local governments have enjoyed explosive growth in the past two decades that can’t be sustained because they are so expensive to operate.
So Dranias offers a set of sweeping reforms in a Local Liberty Charter that would radically change the organization and practical impact of counties, cities and other local governments. Some of the provisions include:
- A codified presumption of liberty, that everyone “is free to
act peaceably and honestly,” and government should interfere with that freedom only when there’s an clear, immediate threat to public safety or health. - Require the automatic repeal of all regulations unless the government can prove a specific regulation meets a limited number of transparent standards.
- Eliminate all zoning laws and rely instead on private covenants and property-owner associations, similar to how land-use management works now how in Houston.
- Clearly separate legislative, executive and judicial functions at the local level.
- Force police departments to reduce crime by meeting certain benchmarks, or contract with another jurisdiction to do the job instead.
- Limit spending growth to the rate of population growth plus inflation. And,
- Reject all federal funds that come with any mandates or strings attached, which is just about every dime that Congress doles out.
As is common in think-tank reports, Goldwater focuses on principles and good theories while ignoring the political realities. For example, libertarian purists always point to Houston as their ideal but no other American city has ever dropped its zoning laws to try that model. And for a few years in the 1980s, the Prescott City Council rejected federal funds that are sought routinely sought by other municipalities. That policy lasted until Prescott found itself at risk of running out of water supplies to support development. (Federal grants are available for water treatment and accessing new water sources).
Still, the Goldwater report provides a new prism to use as the public examines what local government is doing, and what might be a better approach to promote liberty and a free people.
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Thank you for covering the Local Liberty Charter! Most of what you have written is a welcome observation. But I must take issue with the statement the report “focuses on principles and good theories while ignoring the political realities.”
The Local Liberty Charter grew out of my experience with a very stark political reality. I grew up in Chicago, practiced law in Cook County for a number of years, tangled with city politicos as a private attorney, litigated numerous public interest lawsuits against cities and towns in Minnesota, and I studied Arizona’s local governmental history as well as nearly all available literature on municipal policy and reform for months. Based on this experience and my studies, it is readily apparent the political reality of local government across America and in Arizona is that cities, counties, towns and special districts are out of control, overly intrusive and financially unsustainable.
Business as usual is utterly impractical because it has led our cities, counties and towns to the brink of insolvency and petty tyranny. And yet, all local public officials seem to want to do is spend more, subsidize more and regulate more to solve the problems caused by doing just that.
For that reason, it is imperative to educate our local public officials about how to restructure local government to serve first principles. That’s precisely what the Local Liberty Charter aims to do. An entirely practical purpose.
The Local Liberty Charter furnishes a comprehensive, integrated set of 10 “rights” for citizens to enforce against their county, city, town or special district. These rights comprise 10 fundamental principles of good governance to remind our local politicians that cities must secure liberty to earn legitimacy. And it does more than engage in philosophical parlor talk–it specifies 27 *tested* policies that can be immediately implemented to facilitate the process of restructuring local government to secure freedom and fiscal responsibility.
But the ability to implement all 27 policies is not litmus test for the viability of the Local Liberty Charter. Not all 27 policies recommended by the Charter need be implemented. But the 10 “rights” identified in the Local Liberty Charter serve the utterly practical purpose of providing a framework within which citizens and public officials might prioritize and evaluate what may or may not be a politically viable municipal policy. And the fact that there are at least 27 tested ways to implement these principles underscores how utterly impractical it is for local public officials to remain ignorant of the fact that there are viable freedom-friendly alternatives to municipal idiocracy or kleptocracy.
Liberty, property rights, separation of powers, guarantees of equal treatment, prohibitions on subsidies are practical principles founded on centuries of experience both recent and ancient that government power, if it is not systematically diffused and checked, will inevitably be abused. Without explicit regard to these principles, and shielded by misplaced faith in the supposedly purifying influence of “local control,” local government has been able to operate with little or no regard to this historical lesson. But reality has finally caught up with local politics.
Implementing the Local Liberty Charter is the only practical way to reconcile the absurdity of local-politics-as-usual with reality.
I’m afraid that referring to the 27 specific proposals in the Goldwater report as “tested” doesn’t mean they clearly will work, much less would be political viable. Several of Dranias’ ideas are connected to single examples of experimentation, and apparently have not been tried with governments of various sizes with differing local economic and political cultural conditions. Referring to Houston and zoning again, here’s on opinion piece I found that suggests that the city still has been rather active in other types of land-use regulation (http://www.planetizen.com/node/109). The author’s conclusion is Houston’s lack of a zoning scheme didn’t stop that city from meddling heavily in private land-use decisions.
Dranias’ kind of out-of-the-box thinking is great, but let’s not fool ourselves when it comes to what actually can be accomplished.
Yeah…a libertarian way to destroy a city or state or government. If we had let the Libertarians run the country…the rich would get richer and the poor would get poorer…just look at Mexico…why do you think the undocumented are coming here to work. Because they can get a head here.