The idea that local control of California cities is a good thing for their citizens is an easy argument to make – in the abstract.
In a very broad sense, such a belief goes to the heart of our country’s theory of governance. Under federalism, it is not the federal government that governs everything, but rather the 50 states, each a little different from the others, with different needs and different attitudes toward regulation.
So why not, within states, extend this to the city level as well? Los Angeles is very different from San Francisco, which is very different from Carmel-by-the-Sea.
And we do it there, with the city councils of our incorporated cities, large and small, able to pass their own local laws and regulations.
The scope may be less, but local tyranny is not fundamentally better than state tyranny. Local governments that use their power to prohibit or restrict personal or economic freedom ultimately infringe on personal and economic freedom.
There also comes a time when excessive regulation in one or more California cities creates a burden on the rest of us. While this point is impossible to define generally – although courts are generally happy to try – many involved Californians who believe in the common good know it when they see it when it comes to particular municipal laws .
The regulation of development within a municipality is an area that clearly affects the rest of us. If, as some large suburban cities in our state do, local politicians impose a one-acre minimum lot size for single-family residences, well, that creates more pressure for limited lots elsewhere.
Real estate – they don’t do it anymore, as the old saw goes.
Or leaders in the Bay Area’s leafy Woodside tried to skirt state mandates to build at least denser, somewhat affordable multifamily housing by saying they had to stick to their former zoning because they are home to endangered mountain lions.
Well, guess what, Woodside – Irvine, Pasadena and Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles are also mountain lion habitats. Although we should create more corridors for wildlife to move around, we are all in this together.
And one obvious way to overcome California’s dreaded housing affordability crisis, now that seemingly the entire human population wants to live in our state, is to build more housing, not less.
That’s one of the main reasons we were pleased to see that a particularly NIMBY constitutional amendment initiative that its supporters hoped to bring to state voters failed to get enough signatures to be passed. listed on the ballot.
The measure that supporters hoped would limit “the state’s ability to set statewide land use and housing policy” won’t be something we have to debate and vote on . Had it passed, it would have provided “for local laws to automatically override conflicting state land use and zoning laws (including affordable housing laws)… Prohibits the State from amending, d grant or deny funding to local governments based on the implementation of this measure. Repeals Article XXXIV of the California Constitution, which requires local voter approval for publicly funded low-income housing projects.
Cities are different, and they should be. Those who can afford the (increasingly exorbitant) price to live in one of our hundreds of cities across the state can and will. But creating a government-mandated discount on California’s housing supply only increases the cost of that housing for all of us.
In the full language of the initiative, supporters of the initiative pointed out that “one size does not fit all, and recent statewide land use and zoning laws State will do great harm without meaningful input and participation from local communities. » This is certainly true. But each California city can still be different from others under the status quo. They simply cannot build a wall against us.
California Daily Newspapers
