The Racist Roots of Virginia’s Land Use Laws

http://virginiafreecitizen.com/2014/05/02/racist-roots-virginias-land-use-laws/ ^ | May 2, 2014 | Mark J. Fitzgibbons

[RightSideNews]

This is Part I of a three-part series about the past, on property rights in Virginia, centering around the Boneta Bill and abuses by localities of their zoning powers. A Gradation of Authorities Virginia counties and localities are political subdivisions of the state subject to the Dillon Rule, meaning their powers are derived from the state legislature. Article VII of the Virginia Constitution reads: “The General Assembly may provide by general law or special act that any county, city, town, or other unit of government may exercise any of its powers or perform any of its functions . . . .” A state legislature, of course, may not delegate powers that it does not have, nor may the delegation of power allow localities to violate rights that the legislature may not. A well-known Jeffersonian maxim is that government closest to the people is better than central planning from a distant capitol. But it is also an American principle that government at all levels must itself be controlled by law.

Jefferson wrote about a “gradation of authorities” that seems to have special meaning after what happened to Martha Boneta and others of less visibility:

[t]he way to have a good and safe government is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly the functions he is competent to do . . . . It is by dividing and subdividing these republics from the great national one down through all its subordinations, until it ends in the administration of every man’s farm by himself . . . that all will be done for the best . . . . What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun?

[Iron Munro]

Q - Why Does The Sun Rise In The East?

A - Racism.

[B4Ranch]

Would you turn the clock back?

(no reply necessary)

[riverdawg]

The title of this article is completely misleading. There is nothing in the article that establishes a connection between the delegation of zoning and land-use regulations to localities and the racially discriminatory laws that prevailed prior to 1962 in Virginia.

[Iron Munro]

My point is that they don’t want to discuss Benghazi because after all, it’s old news from 2 years back.

But they won’t stop yapping about slavery that ended 150 years ago.