Land use regulations. Growth policies. Long range planning. These all sound like good and desirable things. After all, planning ahead is what prudent people do.
However, government always seems to take things off the deep end. After all, if a little planning is a good thing, then a lot of planning ought to be a lot better. Even the minutiae, like a dog poster in a window, are regulated. Before long there are whole branches of government dedicated to controlling what you do with your property.
And it certainly is about control. Leftists love to tell other people what to do. These same people, who would scream loud and long if government was regulating what happens in their bedrooms, seem to have not problem at all with the idea of telling people what color to paint their houses.
Montana is going down this central planning road. I think it is a dangerous trend. These planners are no more intelligent than you or I, but they have power. Their use of this power, like all government intervention, has unintended consequences, consequences that are almost always negative.
For example, take my home state of Washington. Washington has a marvelously extensive tax base, including Boeing, Microsoft, and Weyerhauser. It has experienced an economic expansion of massive proportions in recent years. Yet last year they had a $2.8 Billion deficit. Rather than cut spending, they raised taxes and set themselves up for a projected $5.8 Billion deficit this year.
How can this happen? There are lots of reasons, many of which come from the faulty government-as-a-problem-solver mentality. Certainly oppressive land use regulation and its attendant bureaucracy is a contributing factor. All day long, planners sit in their cubicles and dream up new regulations. They monitor and dictate what can and can’t be done someone else’s property.
In Washington, zoning led to the 1990 Growth Management Act, which led to Comprehensive Plans, which lead to Uniform Development Codes, which lead to Critical Areas Ordinances, which lead to Shoreline Acts… you get the idea. These noble causes are all for the “greater good,” while simultaneously leading to the erosion of individual property rights. You see, when someone else can tell you what to do with your own property, you have ceded control, and therefore, ownership of it.
It was only a matter of time that creeping bureaucracy would come to Montana. Counties & cities all seem to have planning staffs that never seem to stop planning. They just keep planning and we keep paying.
Gallatin country has growth policy, a trails plan, a recreation plan, and something called the “National Spatial Data Infrastructure Community Demonstration Project.” In addition, there are all sorts of committees, districts, and regulations, which you can see yourself at http://www.gallatin.mt.gov/Public_Documents/gallatincomt_plandept/planning.
Good intentions do not necessarily yield good results. And someone always has to pay. Open spaces, walking trails, and neighborhood beautification all sound wonderful, at least while prosperity is funding it, but when the economy takes a downturn, people start realizing how expensive these things are. Like other government programs, taxpayers always end up being stuck with the check.
You know, I am not opposed to reasonable zoning for things like ensuring public safety. Other things, like property values, appearance, or home density can be dealt with by neighborhood associations and covenants.
Ironically, the influence of planners spreads in exactly the same way as the growth they seek to control. Maybe we need a planning board to control the spread of central-planning government.
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