Posted on 11/21/2001 11:04:43 PM PST by pattycake
http://www.sermonaudio.com/new_details.asp?ID=10834
Smart Growth or Stealth Enslavement? (SermonAudio.com is not responsible for the content of external internet sites) Monday, November 19, 2001
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WASHINGTON – Bob Harrison couldn't believe what he was hearing. Even when his visitor, "John Smith," placed the document on his desk and said, "Look at this," Harrison wasn't convinced.
As director of public policy for the Defenders of Property Rights, a non-profit legal group based in Washington, D.C., Harrison had heard of many outrageous schemes that would impact the rights of property owners, but what Smith – a business owner and member of DPR – was telling him went far beyond anything he'd heard of to date.
"Quite frankly, I thought he had been taking drugs," Harrison recalled. "But what he was saying and showing me made my hair stand on end."
It was a document Smith claimed was a mechanism for the federalization of land use in the United States, something many states and many Americans have opposed for years.
Titled "Growing Smart Legislative Guidebook," the 2,000-page document is the product of Growing Smart, a seven-year project of the American Planning Association, a non-profit organization of professional land use planners and persons connected to the planning community through a shared interest in the subject. The Guidebook is essentially a collection of model enabling statutes (with commentary) that state legislatures would adopt to authorize planning, land development controls, regulations, procedural processes; everything states and local governments might need for – in the authors' words – "planning and the management of change." The statutes would be new requirements placed on state agencies and local governments to make often-significant changes in their ordinances and policies.
Several chapters have been released, and are already being used and under consideration by some states. Phase III, the finalized version, that includes some important chapters, has not been released, but is on the APA website.
Smith stressed to Harrison that the Guidebook, which had been funded in part by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to the tune of $1.78 million, was expected to be approved by HUD Secretary Martinez no later than Nov. 22 – less than a month away at the time.
According to the APA website, the Growing Smart project was initiated in October 1994, with seed money provided by the Seattle-based Henry W. Jackson Foundation, founded in honor of the late senator from the state of Washington. In addition to funding from HUD (the lead federal agency), money had also come from the Department of Transportation, EPA, FEMA, the Department of Agriculture, the Annie Casey Foundation and the Siemens Corporation.
There were no public hearings, no public notice, and Harrison discovered that few if anyone on Capital Hill were aware of it. This was preposterous. How could something like this be developed without somebody knowing about it, he wondered. How had proponents managed to evade the radar detector of private property rights advocates and government watchdog groups?
"Well, lo and behold, how quickly we have forgotten Hillary Clinton's Health Care Plan," Harrison observed sardonically, referring to the discarded project which like the Guidebook was developed clandestinely. "This is for zoning and land use what Hillary wanted imposed on health care."
Smart growth with a turbo-charger
Attorney Nancy Marzulla, president of De
fenders of Property Rights, and the senior staff attorney virtually closeted themselves in a room for a week to go line-by-line through the Guidebook, all of its 15 chapters, with a fine-toothed comb. They emerged only for breaks and to go home in the evenings. They were "absolutely appalled and horrified" by what they discovered, said Harrison.
"It [the Guidebook] is intricate; it is complex – it i
s smart growth with a turbo-charger put together by some of the smartest folks in the smart growth movement. And there are some awfully smart people in the smart growth movement, from land use planners to attorneys – and they've covered the map."
The APA, Harrison learned, had sought out "like-minded folk in the Clinton administration who loved the idea of top-down, massive nuts-to-bolts, A-to-Z, cover-the-globe type of comprehensive approach to land use planning."
There was a reason for the strategy, which critics like Harrison view as a way to bring in federal land use planning "through the back door." A mid-1970s federal land use bill sponsored by Rep. Morris Udall had been soundly defeated when a massive outpouring of grassroots opposition forced Congress to reject it. Congress would no doubt reject a similar proposal again.
"A frontal attack by legislation is not really feasible," Harrison said. "And rather than have HUD get into zoning through the use of its regulatory power, which would subject the department to notice and comment requirements and legal challenges, HUD and APA adopted a different approach which could not be challenged in court. What they pulled together was a relationship where APA would develop this model land use code for HUD as a guidebook for state legislatures. HUD would pay them. HUD would review the product as it was submitted, and at the end of the process the secretary of HUD would then have one of three choices: He could approve the Guidebook (either by formal approval or default); disapprove the Guidebook; or he could disapprove the Guidebook and insist that a dissenting report be contained in the massive tome."
If Martinez chooses the third option, APA would still own the Guidebook and could promote it to state legislatures for adoption, but it would not have the imprimatur of the government approval.
"In essence, it will be the American Planning Association enticing states to accept this," said Harrison. "It's one step removed from the feds imposing their views on the states. A non-government organization would be having an impact over the states' land use planning policies. Their views, those of APA, will be the prevailing views."
Defenders of Property Rights has spent the last week spearheading an effort to persuade Martinez to choose the third option.
"We're struggling to catch up after seven years of effort by the other side working under the radar screen," said Harrison. "In the last three weeks we've been going 100 miles an hour."
A letter has been drafted and over a dozen commercial and non-profit organizations have signed it. The letter – which is being delivered today – reads, in part:
We write to urge you to exercise your authority under the HUD/APA contract to disapprove the Legislative Guidebook, to be finalized November 22, on the grounds that we were excluded from the process by which it was formulated, which the product itself reflects.
The Legislative Guidebook as currently drafted federalizes local and state land use control, tramples private property rights, discriminates against minority business owners, and impedes economic development.
Those signing the letter by noon Friday include the National Black Chamber of Commerce, the Small Business Survival Committee, the National Cattlemen's Association, Americans for Tax Reform, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Conservative Union, Frontiers of Freedom/People for the USA.
The National Association of Manufacturers has endorsed the effort but drafted its own letter urging Martinez to reject the Guidebook.
Congress has been alerted. Mike Hardiman, lobbyist for the American Land Rights Association, reported Thursday that "alarm bells are ringing" at the Capitol, and the Western Caucus – a group of representatives from western states headed by Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif. – was composing a letter expressing similar sentiments to that by Defenders of Property Rights. By Friday there were over a dozen signatures, with more expected. The letter will be delivered today. A staff person at the Western Caucus said it would be "very good" if people contacted their representatives and urged them to sign the letter.
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