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<div><font color="#000000">Visionaries,</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font color="#000000">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.</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font color="#000000">Mark</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font color="#000000">************</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font color="#000000">Printed from the Boise Weekly - Not Your
Everyday Newspaper website: www.boiseweekly.com<br>
<br>
POSTED ON AUGUST 9, 2006:<br>
<br>
Planners: Prop 2 is Spooky<br>
<br>
Property-rights measure the hot topic at planning group<br>
<br>
By Shea Andersen<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
"Everybody's talking about it," said Jerome Mapp, former
Boise City Council member and a longtime urban planner.<br>
<br>
"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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
"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."<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
"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."<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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."<br>
<br>
That sort of analysis haunts Nilsson and her peers.<br>
<br>
"It's a future that's really unattractive to most people,"
Nilsson said.<br>
<br>
In his keynote address to the conference, David Siegel, president of
the American Planning Association, addressed the Measure 37 look-alike
bills.<br>
<br>
"It's certainly no coincidence that you're seeing these Measure
37 clones surfacing in these states," he said.<br>
<br>
URL for this story:
http://www.boiseweekly.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=184034</font><br>
<font color="#000000"></font></div>
<div>********************</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><font color="#000000">Printed from the Boise Weekly - Not Your
Everyday Newspaper website: www.boiseweekly.com<br>
<br>
POSTED ON AUGUST 9, 2006:<br>
<br>
Maxwell: We're In the Money<br>
<br>
By Shea Andersen<br>
<br>
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.</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><br>
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."<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
"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.<br>
<br>
"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.<br>
<br>
"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."<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
"We were prepared," Maxwell said. "All of a sudden it's
go, boom, and we were off to the races."<br>
<br>
When he hears that planners are alarmed by his measure, he does not
shed a tear.<br>
<br>
"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?"<br>
<br>
URL for this story:
http://www.boiseweekly.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=184035</font></div>
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