Remember The One About Local Control?

Political forces who normally worship at the altar of local control abandoned the faith last week in the U.S. House of Representatives.

In passing a controversial property rights bill along mostly party lines, the House voted to strip cities and counties of much of their power in land use issues. That authority would be shifted to the federal courts instead.

It’s the third time the Republican-dominated House has passed such legislation, and its backers, including landowners and developers, are hoping the Senate will concur this time.

Suddenly, it seems, the conservatives’ traditional preference for local over federal government is wavering.

That’s too bad, because the principles in HR2372 threaten the ability of communities to deal with their own issues, applying local understanding and home-grown values.

At present, landowners who disagree with restrictions imposed on them by local zoning and land use ordinances have recourse to an established set of appeals and court procedures, beginning at the local level.

Under the House-passed proposal, however, once they are turned down at the first appeal level, they could head straight for the federal court system - a tactic that could overwhelm the federal dockets.

Worse, it would convert planning decisions, by which communities traditionally have shaped their own priorities, into a province of the federal government.

The majority Republicans in the House have been quick to assail such trends in the past. Indeed, when an amendment was offered to make HR2372 apply to all rights - not just property rights - they voted it down.

Clearly, vital constitutional rights attach to property ownership, and federal courts often are needed to resolve property rights disputes. But federal court should be the last resort, not the first.

Under current court rulings, a dissatisfied landowner must exhaust the local remedies available to him before initiating a federal action. That reasonable system screens out cases that can be settled based on current law and the precedents that were established when other courts handed down rulings on similar issues. Thus, the upper levels of the judicial hierarchy can remain available for more complex cases involving fresh, unsettled issues.

Thanks to such a system, property rights are better protected from value-reducing restrictions today than they were 20 years ago.

HR2372 isn’t needed. The House would be wise to repent of its apostasy and reaffirm its creed of local control.