[Vision2020] Prop 2: Boise Weekly

Thu Aug 10 09:53:01 PDT 2006

Not in OUR Backyard!
  Vote NO
  on Prop 2

  You know, Dan C. could make a killing off of this one.  Actually, I might be able to file a claim too!  If I can hear the jackhammering that is going on next door to him, it must really be loud at his house!  I would say that could be worth some money with prop 2 since the house has a CUP.  Since it is supposed to be an anti-takings proposition, does prop 2 affect any protection for government entities for their own projects, ie. roads, sidewalks, etc.? 

Mark Solomon <msolomon at moscow.com> wrote:
        Visionaries,

  Below  are two worthwhile articles on Proposition 2. Anyone have a good idea for an anti-Prop 2 campaign name/slogan? Something that describes the issue would be good. All I come up with are things like "Save Our Communities: Stop Prop 2" which is hardly informative or tightly focused.

  Mark

  ************

  Printed from the Boise Weekly - Not Your Everyday Newspaper website: www.boiseweekly.com

POSTED ON AUGUST 9, 2006:

Planners: Prop 2 is Spooky

Property-rights measure the hot topic at planning group

By Shea Andersen

The lunch topic at the annual Western Planners conference was hurricanes, and how catastrophes can challenge local planning efforts. Slides of a leveled New Orleans filled the display screen above the tinkle of cutlery.

But within the Grove Centre last week, another storm was on the minds of city and regional planners gathered for their annual meeting. The storm was legislative in nature, but to some, no less a benchmark.

"Everybody's talking about it," said Jerome Mapp, former Boise City Council member and a longtime urban planner.

"It," is a measure on Idaho's ballot, Proposition 2, which would radically change the nature of land-use planning and regulation. The measure, fronted by Boise anti-tax crusader Laird Maxwell but funded by national Libertarian groups, would change Idaho's constitution to force government agencies to pay private property owners any time a regulation is deemed damaging to the owner's property values.

Mapp said the measure could effectively derail one of Idaho's biggest populist efforts of the last year, in which the Idaho Legislature effectively barred a California company, Sempra Energy, from building a coal-fired power plant on land it owns near Burley.

"Under this proposal, as I understand it, Sempra could come back," Mapp said. Because the Legislature's moratorium stopped Sempra from exercising their private property rights, "They could build it without any rules or regulations."

At last week's conference, planners fretted that such a measure, if approved by voters in November, would upend the normal planning process and invite legions of lawyers bent on nailing down property values claims.

"The whole purpose of planning is, 'Shared burden, shared benefit,'" said Patricia Nilsson, president of the Idaho Planning Association. "If we throw that away, it's just going to be neighbor versus neighbor."

What Nilsson and Mapp like, they say, is a planning process where, for the trouble of speaking up, a citizen can have input on a policy issue. Not so with the passage of Proposition 2, they say.

Many in the room were cognizant of the situation in Oregon, where in 2005 citizens passed a voter initiative, Measure 37, that, like Proposition 2, requires property owners who file a claim get compensation for loss of value due to regulations. The Oregon measure also went a step further, stating that a government entity can choose to waive the regulation that adversely affects the property owner. Researchers at Portland State University said in a report that Measure 37 "has disabled the tools used over the past four decades to prevent sprawl and preserve agricultural and forest land in Oregon."

That sort of analysis haunts Nilsson and her peers.

"It's a future that's really unattractive to most people," Nilsson said.

In his keynote address to the conference, David Siegel, president of the American Planning Association, addressed the Measure 37 look-alike bills.

"It's certainly no coincidence that you're seeing these Measure 37 clones surfacing in these states," he said.

URL for this story: http://www.boiseweekly.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=184034

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  Printed from the Boise Weekly - Not Your Everyday Newspaper website: www.boiseweekly.com

POSTED ON AUGUST 9, 2006:

Maxwell: We're In the Money

By Shea Andersen

For most of his career as an anti-tax activist, Laird Maxwell has made do with a variety of donations, some big, some small. But when he dipped a toe into the larger national push against property tax regulations, he fell into the money pool.

Maxwell said his pitch to wealthy Libertarian activist Howard Rich and other well-off conservative activists was simple: "You got the money, I got the time. We'll make this happen."

And so they have. Now Maxwell is a conduit for hundreds of thousands of dollars, some he keeps to help fund ballot initiatives like Idaho's Proposition 2, others he sends out of state. Under the auspices of "America At Its Best," Maxwell recently sent $450,000 to a group, "Missourians in Charge," which is pushing a similar property-rights initiative.

To get Proposition 2 ready for the ballot, he took in more cash. Except for $50 donated by Maxwell, the entire budget for his group, "This House is My Home," came from out of state, according to reports from the Idaho Secretary of State. Fully $100,000 came from Montana-based America At Its Best, a group that lists Maxwell as its treasurer. But $237,000 came from the New York-based Fund for Democracy, which is headed by Rich, a libertarian activist. In fact, Maxwell readily admits he got his money from out of state. He said he started America At Its Best to help draw money from out-of-state donors.

"It just makes sense to start a new group," he said. Maxwell has never met Rich--he calls him "Howie"--but they have spoken on the phone.

"Howie's a big contributor to a lot of causes," he said. At various national conferences that draw like-minded people such as Maxwell and Rich, there is an opportunity, Maxwell said, to compare notes and exchange addresses, and sometimes checks. Maxwell said when he gets a donor eager to help him push an Idaho initiative or an Arizona measure, which he is also helping with, he just sends them to America At Its Best.

"I said, 'Look, these guys are working on a nationwide basis," Maxwell said. "We're kicking butt in a bunch of different states. Our effort is limiting government. That's what we're trying to do."

The time is ripe now, he said. When the Oregon Supreme Court ruled in favor of a measure there that forces the state to compensate property owners or change laws, Maxwell was ready. He had corralled his donors. He had all but hired a Colorado firm to gather signatures (he ended up paying $322,834 to Kennedy Enterprises to run the Idaho signup effort.

"We were prepared," Maxwell said. "All of a sudden it's go, boom, and we were off to the races."

When he hears that planners are alarmed by his measure, he does not shed a tear.

"These planners and all that, they just get in the way. Most of that planning is futile anyway," Maxwell said. "It's really kind of arrogant. Who do they think they are?"

URL for this story: http://www.boiseweekly.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=184035
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