George Rebane

When was the last time you heard something like ‘The park will now stay open until one hour after sunset instead of closing when the sun goes down.’ or ‘From now on you again get to put any kind of lights you want into your kitchen when you remodel.’?  Don’t hold your breath.

Our personal and commercial freedoms have been ratcheting down for over a century now, and the pace seems to be picking up as we get dumber and demand to be ever more secure from our own and other people’s bad decisions.  The government’s answer is always to pile on more restrictive laws, regulations, and ordnances.  Everybody knows that the last thing we want is a “do nothing” Congress or Assembly or Board of Supervisors or City Council.  From age immemorial, the instinct of all governments has been to control more, and then tax more to pay for making sure that the people comply – all for their own good, of course.

Today we send most of our tribute to the federal and state governments.  Some of that money actually comes back, doled out for purposes that our leaders want to see fulfilled.  Therefore every dollar that comes back has attached an instruction book for how to spend it – the do’s and don’ts – after which we sometimes hire more government workers to make sure that the instructions are properly followed.  Unfortunately the problem doesn’t end there.

At home, our local governments are filled with people who want to be seen doing their own part in providing for the public good.  So when a new mandate arrives from on high telling us that from now on we must do this and that, our local leaders along with their hard-working staffs examine the ‘local impact’ of the new state/fed legislation or regulation.  And to no one’s surprise, they almost always find it wanting.  So, on top of what the high priests manning the domed temples of our capitols prescribe, our local supervisors, councils, commissions, boards, … add on their own pound of requirements.  I guess the idea being that this is the only kind of self-determination left to us – if the feds come along and pound our toe with their hammer, we instantly raise the ante, grab our own hammer and pound our other toe.  This shows both them and us that we are indeed still masters of our fate. 

I can now hear some of you say, ‘Rebane, you’re blowing this all out of proportion.  It isn’t half as bad as that.’  Well, OK.  Then I propose the following.  When the next ordnance, regulation, or ‘plan’ comes up for discussion and implementation, let’s have our local pols give it to us without any cover-up or obfuscation.  For public input, let’s have them draft the new rules in easy-to-read parts – the first part contains the words that spell out the will of our distant lords, and the second part contains any modification mandated by our local ministers.  Make it real clear, like use boldface or italics or different font or …  so that all of us can see the added wisdom, locally grown.

For example, in the new county Fire Safe Plan the draft can be formatted so if what the state says is “… clear to brown dirt to a distance of 500 ft around every man-made structure …”, and, if this is locally modified, then the next  paragraph says “… clear to brown dirt to a distance of 1,000 ft around every man-made structure …”.  This way everyone will know what, if any, the local content of our rules for rightful living are.  We can then holler bloody murder or shout hosannas during the work groups and information sessions many of us attend. 

Right now, half the time in most such meetings is wasted in explaining to some confused worthy in the audience that ‘this sentence actually came down from the feds or state or somewhere on high’.  The other half is wasted by the frustrated staffer not knowing where in hell a particular number or requirement originated, and people leave more confused than when they arrived.  It’s almost as if our elected officials don’t want us to know, and possibly use that knowledge to throw them out come the next election.