Politics

Public Input

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I’ve defended the Town of Culver in the past when people say things happen without enough notice or public input. From the 2014 Comprehensive Plan, to four times Culver participated in Stellar planning through the housing expansion with READI, Culver has been pretty forthcoming with community input and requests for participation and input. In the past couple of years there has been some changes of this and a recent visit to the Culver Town Council meeting highlighted this.

I used to attend the Council meetings on a regular basis, but with our main projects under construction in Plymouth, it became a choice of where to spend my evenings in the most productive manner. (The change to Thursday meetings in lieu of Tuesday meetings wasn’t helpful either…) Where Public Input used to be at the end of the meeting, there is now a Public Dialogue item towards the beginning with the following admonishment: This is an opportunity for the Council to open discussions with the public concerning items on the agenda. Unlike the public concern section, these conversations will be within an open format monitored by the President to ensure no one individual dominates the discussion or misdirects away from the specific topic.

I don’t think this change just occurred last month, but it is a recent change. It causes a few concerns for me. 1) This puts the opportunity for public input before there is any business conducted by the board. This means if you want to comment on something that occurred, you would need to come back at the next meeting for an opportunity to speak and, technically, per the admonishment above, request to be placed on the agenda. 2) Acknowledging that the privilege was occasionally was abused in the past, the intent of this seems to be to stifle audience input in other parts of the meeting. I have not been going often enough to speak to how this is operating, but reading that statement would make me less likely to raise my hand during board debate.

Lord knows, I have sat through council meetings where they have dragged due to prolonged audience interruptions, but I also know that there have been countless meetings where audience input has provided salient points that rightly affect the deliberation of the council. I always give deference to elected officials, who are essentially volunteers, stepping up to make a difference. But winning an election does not automatically make you an expert in all things. There are almost always community members with specialized expertise in things under discussion, if not specific experience with the issue under discussion that’s happening in their neighborhood.

I did note significantly fewer audience members than my experience in the past. Limiting input will have that effect. This will limit audience attendance to those that have a specific issue before the board, which was the reason I attended. In my opinion, this will not only limit input, but also the dissemination of information in the community.

This is not the only instance of this kind of change. There is another trend towards fewer community member populated subcommittees in favor of more direction from staff, appointed positions and elected officials. Community help such as this has been terminated in favor of more control. Community volunteer groups are experiencing more skeptical scrutiny than support. This is likely just another case of the pendulum swinging, and as often happens in government, it results in an over correction in the opposite direction. Hopefully we’re near the peak of the swing towards the control side and we start back in the other direction soon. I don’t think much is being intentionally hidden. I think it’s being justified for expediency. I would like to see things move back towards inclusiveness soon. I think collaboration with the citizens produces some of the best results, as shown from the Stellar experience.

Personal Property Rights

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Land ownership has always been seen as a sign of permanence and investment in the community and in the political structures from municipality to county to state and all of the way up to the country as a whole. Article 1 of the Constitution pushed voting determination back to the States, and in the early elections, many States made land ownership a prerequisite to voting. Even now, investment in property is considered a goal. Individually, the dream of home ownership is a goal for most people. Municipalities tend to favor homeowners over renters, understanding that investing in a property in their jurisdiction brings community involvement, pride and often other types of investment.

That said, it’s disheartening to see the erosion of personal property rights. Zoning Ordinances by nature apply some of these restrictions for what’s perceived to be the greater good, but they attempt to guide by best practices, and are required by law to have public review, public input and an appeals process. This has been long established, but in the past, has been fairly lenient unless someone is being harmed. That process is becoming more intrusive and is coming after property owners in other ways, imposing taxes, fines and moratoriums.

Case #1 – Locally, there was discussion at a Culver Redevelopment Commission meeting and at the Downtown Strategies meeting about imposing fines on property owners in the commercial districts that do not have operating commercial businesses. (I mentioned this in a previous post, here.) Part of the argument given was, storage is not allowed in the commercial districts and a building just housing boxes without some from of retail offering was a violation of the Zoning Ordinance. I would have to assume, even if the building was purchased on a speculative basis, the owner would be happy to have an income producing business in there if they had that opportunity. The buildings in question are not being rented out as storage, but have the building owner’s own material there.

Case #2 – At the County level, there is an election flier floating around with a couple of lines that seems to be pretty contradictory:

  • Fought to Protect 12,000 Acres of Farm Ground from Industrial Solar.
  • Defended Property Owners from Gov’t Over-reach!

How is telling a farmer/landowner that they can only use their land to harvest corn & beans, in lieu of harvesting solar energy, not government over-reach?

Case #3 – And then there’s the current news headline from New York City, where the Mayor has decided to charge additional tax, gussied up as a pied-a-terre tax, on second homes worth over $5MM. This one and the Culver one seem awfully similar, since in both cases the building is zoned correctly, but the powers-that-be, don’t like the use or lack of use the current owner is pursuing. In NYC, what is that going to do to property values? I would have to assume every property currently valued at $5MM just dropped in value to $4.9MM. But wait, I forgot, the property owner has no control over what value is assessed. They’ll just lose money when the property sells…

In all of these cases, the stated goals are to promote the greater good. And as mentioned above, there is usually a required appeals process. In the cases above, there are no clear paths toward appeal. (What is the appeal process when a moratorium has been declared?) So the harmed individuals would be forced to pursue some form of civil remedy, which will undoubtedly be costly to the landowner and the governing body… but of course, the governing body is making demands and backing them up with other people’s money. The rule makers have no skin in the game…

On a grander scale, this is why our Founding Fathers set up the United States as a Republic and not a Democracy. Despite that, in the local trenches, government tends to lean more towards democracy, where politicians make decisions with their finger in the wind. Democracy tends to allow the majority to run over the minority. The individual property owner is always in the minority when it comes to how they want to use their property. That is very personal. It seems the individual property owner is falling victim to the vocal “majority” more and more.

Filibusters, Shutdowns and other General Government BS

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This post fully embraces the “rant” designation, so scroll on if you don’t want my political opinion piece. Listening to the back and forth over the past month and a half has been tiring and frustrating. The Democrats’ position has seemed pretty untenable, considering they (Democrats while in power) passed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) without Republican support, they (Democrats while in power) passed the Covid enhancements to the ACA, which included the sunset provision that’s upon us, without Republican support and now, while not in power, they (Democrats) are demanding the Republicans fix it. In response, the Republicans have proposed paying everyone during the shutdown, despite the fact that the whole reason for the shutdown is there’s no money appropriated to do so. In typical Federal Government fashion. the only solutions either side seem to be able to see is to throw more money at problems.

Every time there is a government shutdown, they seem to put more rules in place to make the next one less painful… somewhat defeating the whole point of it. Why do a shutdown if no one is going to notice? After one of the last shutdowns, things were changed to assure that government employees would be reimbursed for lost wages, even though they weren’t working. No business could survive that way… The latest enhancement to that is that government employees will not even have to wait until the end of the shutdown to get paid! The ones laid off are already getting a paid vacation, but if the current proposal goes through, they’ll get a regular paycheck while off. I guess, “Why not?” All the Senators and Representatives got their check!!! They still managed to collect taxes though…

Side Note: Everyone should have an emergency fund, because it’s rare to have a 100% guaranteed income, but if you work in an industry (government) where these shutdowns occur regularly, it’s even more important. There is no question of IF there will be another government shutdown, only when… I have a hard time working up a lot of sympathy for those that were surprised by this.

James Stewart as Jefferson Smith filibustering on floor of the Senate

There was some talk about changing the Senate rules to eliminate the filibuster. It may be on the way out the door anyway, as there was an attempt to eliminate it in the last Democrat controlled Congress, but was stopped by just two moderate Democrats. And they’re not in office anymore… I am fully against its elimination. I think the minority party should have some vehicle to slow and bring to attention bad legislation, but it shouldn’t be painless. Otherwise, like this time, it’s just obstruction for no benefit. There was no pain for Senators in this latest shutdown filibuster. Sometime in the 1970’s the rules were changed to allow a filibuster to only require an objection. Yes, that’s a simplification, but accurate. Before that time, a Senator or group of Senators would have had to speak continuously on the floor of the Senate to keep the filibuster in effect, a la 1939 movie, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. There was pain for all involved as the Senate had to stay in session and those filibustering had to hold the floor for hours on end, speaking into the record. The new rules are lazy and painless. If you want to take a stand against something, you should have to actually stand!

With very few exceptions, most Americans didn’t feel any effects of the shutdown, as most things continued as is. Only “nonessential” workers were furloughed. It wasn’t until the SNAP program began to run out of money and the airlines began to feel the air traffic controller pinch that anyone really perked up. Senators cared about SNAP, because those are actual voters affected. They didn’t care about not paying air traffic controllers, until it escalated to the fear of constituents complaining about not getting to fly home for the holidays.

In my opinion, pain and risk form the answer. Senators should feel some pain when they determine something should be filibustered and their constituents should feel some pain during a shutdown in order to get their attention. Senators should have been afraid of their actions getting their constituents attention for something that resulted in nothing. As is, the whole thing was low cost theatre that had very little effect on anything.

Veterans Day Celebrations in the Midst of Turmoil – J.R. Gaylor

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J.R. Gaylor

With turmoil foreign and domestic, we pause today to celebrate the living veterans for their service, their patriotism, their love of country and willingness to sacrifice in defense of our country. As important as it is to defend ourselves against foreign threats as our veterans have nobly served, there are some very insidious threats we are facing with America against itself.

Specifically, I am referring to the acceptability—by far too many—of the lawlessness we see happening, as well as the twisted logic behind the lawlessness.

We are seeing the direct contrast of the “broken window” theory versus “progressive criminal justice” model.

The theory of the “Broken Window” holds that addressing minor crimes like vandalism, public intoxication, and minor theft creates an atmosphere of order and lawfulness versus “progressive criminal justice” which promotes reforms such as ending cash bail, not prosecuting misdemeanors, and early release of offenders.

The justification behind this “progressive” thought is ‘because someone told a lie, it doesn’t make them a liar’. Or ‘because someone took a bribe, it doesn’t make them corrupt’. In other words, ‘if a crime is committed and no one is responsible, was there actually a crime at all’?

Famously said, “a great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.”

Next July 4th, we will celebrate 250 years of the great American experiment of Independence under a Constitutional Republic from which we aspire to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility and provide for the common defense.

Let us aspire to recapture that vision.

J.R. Gaylor President/CEO; ABC IN/KY