Sandlapper has recently posted an excellent series of diaries about Howie Rich and the money he is pouring into TABOR (Taxpayer Bill of Rights) initiatives around the West. However, Howie Rich is also behind a second series of voter initiatives which could prove even more destructive.
Anti-regulatory initiatives are on the ballot this year in Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and Washington. They are sold as "eminent domain" initiatives, supposedly designed to eliminate governmental abuse of eminent domain. However, that's not their real intent. Their true purpose is to outlaw most forms of land-use and environmental regulation. There's an excellent chance these initiatives will win in November, since so far there has been almost no organized opposition. And Howie Rich is spending millions of dollars to make sure they pass...
These initiatives would essentially define most land-use or environmental regulation as a "takings". Such regulations would be outlawed unless the government pays property-owners for any and all lost profits which could be attributed to the regulations. Do zoning regulations prohibit subdivision in an area zoned for agriculture? Those regulations would be outlawed unless the government is willing to pay a property owner whatever profits she claimed she would gain if she subdivided her land into, say, 1/7th acre lots. Do environmental regulations prohibit a powerplant on an inholding in the middle of a National Monument? Out go those regulations, unless the government is willing to pay the property holder the entire profit which he claims he could make from the project. Since no state or local government could afford to pay such costs, the effect would be to blow holes in environmental and land-use regulations throughout the West.
High Country News published an outstanding article by Ray Ringling about these initiatives in the July 24th issue. He peels away layers of front organizations supporting the initiatives, and traces the money back to, surprise, Americans for Limited Government. The chairman of Americans for Limited Government is, of course, Howie Rich. As of mid-summer, Howie had spent $200,000 on the Montana initiative, $1.5 million on the California initiative, $230,000 on the Idaho initiative, and $25,000 on the Arizona initiative. There are probably additional donations which have not yet been discovered. For example, $600,000 was funneled to the California initiative by Montanans in Action, the sponsors of the Montana initiative. It seems unlikely that this money originated in Montana, and it may well have come from Rich.
If these initiatives succeed, their impact could be even more far-reaching than Oregon's Measure 37, which passed in 2004 and threatens to destroy Oregon's land use regulations. High Country News states that
The new initiatives would apply to all landowners facing new regulations passed by state and local governments. The one in Washington would be retroactive, covering regulations passed since 1995. They all exempt regulations that directly protect health and safety, such as limits on sewage discharges, but those regulations rarely stand in the way of development. Moreover, compared to Oregon, most of the targeted states have immature land-use regulations. All their land-use planning would essentially be frozen, with no chance of evolving in the future, even as the states are hit with population booms. Rapidly growing communities from Boise to Tucson, now inching toward meaningful land-use regulations, would be stopped in their tracks.
The scary thing is that while Howie Rich and his corporate buddies are pouring millions of dollars into this initiative campaign, there has been little or no organized opposition so far. Environmental and progressive groups seem to have been caught completely by surprise, while the general public has so far been fooled by the "stop abuse of eminent domain' rhetoric.
I strongly urge everyone to read the High Country News article. It is online here. Note that registration is requested but NOT required in order to read the article. High Country News also has a podcast of excerpts of its interview with Howie Rich, which can be found here.
This is a classic stealth campaign, its true purpose concealed beneath a fog of mis-information. The first step in fighting it is to spread the word as widely as possible about what the consequences of these initiatives would be, and the disastrous effects they would have on the land that so many of us care so deeply about.