[Vision2020] Prop 2: Boise Weekly

[Mark Solomon]

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

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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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