Regionalism: The Next Grand Experiment in Social Engineering
As we’ve been pointing out over the last few years, there’s more to this regionalism thing that just cooperation between metro counties. There are definite plans for wrestling control away from duly elected local governments and replacing it with regional governance that’s unelected and unaccountable to the people. Even worse, control is being shifted to the federal level which is absolutely tone deaf to “We The People”.
Maybe for some it has to smack you right in the head, or the pocketbook. Or, maybe that’s the way you want it. Now that Cobb County has hired Comm360 to the tune of $186,000+ to lobby state and federal agencies for legislation and grants, I’m sure they’ll be happy to oblige these new federal rules. There are always strings attached to federal grant money. It’s not too late to reject federal money and intrusion into local control and home rule.
The following article by Stanley Kurtz from National Review highlights additional concerns with regionalism.
Attention America’s Suburbs: You Have Just Been Annexed
by Stanley Kurtz July 20, 2015 10:01 AM
It’s difficult to say what’s more striking about President Obama’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) regulation: its breathtaking radicalism, the refusal of the press to cover it, or its potential political ramifications. The danger AFFH poses to Democrats explains why the press barely mentions it. This lack of curiosity, in turn, explains why the revolutionary nature of the rule has not been properly understood. Ultimately, the regulation amounts to back-door annexation, a way of turning America’s suburbs into tributaries of nearby cities.
This has been Obama’s purpose from the start. In Spreading the Wealth: How Obama Is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities, I explain how a young Barack Obama turned against the suburbs and threw in his lot with a group of Alinsky-style community organizers who blamed suburban tax-flight for urban decay. Their bible was Cities Without Suburbs, by former Albuquerque mayor David Rusk. Rusk, who works closely with Obama’s Alinskyite mentors and now advises the Obama administration, initially called on cities to annex their surrounding suburbs. When it became clear that outright annexation was a political non-starter, Rusk and his followers settled on a series of measures designed to achieve de facto annexation over time.
The plan has three elements: 1) Inhibit suburban growth, and when possible encourage suburban re-migration to cities. This can be achieved, for example, through regional growth boundaries (as in Portland), or by relative neglect of highway-building and repair in favor of public transportation. 2) Force the urban poor into the suburbs through the imposition of low-income housing quotas. 3) Institute “regional tax-base sharing,” where a state forces upper-middle-class suburbs to transfer tax revenue to nearby cities and less-well-off inner-ring suburbs (as in Minneapolis/St. Paul).
If you press suburbanites into cities, transfer urbanites to the suburbs, and redistribute suburban tax money to cities, you have effectively abolished the suburbs. For all practical purposes, the suburbs would then be co-opted into a single metropolitan region. Advocates of these policy prescriptions call themselves “regionalists.”
AFFH goes a long way toward achieving the regionalist program of Obama and his organizing mentors. In significant measure, the rule amounts to a de facto regional annexation of America’s suburbs. To see why, let’s have a look at the rule.
AFFH obligates any local jurisdiction that receives HUD funding to conduct a detailed analysis of its housing occupancy by race, ethnicity, national origin, English proficiency, and class (among other categories). Grantees must identify factors (such as zoning laws, public-housing admissions criteria, and “lack of regional collaboration”) that account for any imbalance in living patterns. Localities must also list “community assets” (such as quality schools, transportation hubs, parks, and jobs) and explain any disparities in access to such assets by race, ethnicity, national origin, English proficiency, class, and more. Localities must then develop a plan to remedy these imbalances, subject to approval by HUD.
By itself, this amounts to an extraordinary takeover of America’s cities and towns by the federal government. There is more, however.
AFFH obligates grantees to conduct all of these analyses at both the local and regional levels. In other words, it’s not enough for, say, Philadelphia’s “Mainline” Montgomery County suburbs to analyze their own populations by race, ethnicity, and class to determine whether there are any imbalances in where groups live, or in access to schools, parks, transportation, and jobs. Those suburbs are also obligated to compare their own housing situations to the Greater Philadelphia region as a whole.
So if some Montgomery County’s suburbs are predominantly upper-middle-class, white, and zoned for single-family housing, while the Philadelphia region as a whole is dotted with concentrations of less-well-off African Americans, Hispanics, or Asians, those suburbs could be obligated to nullify their zoning ordinances and build high-density, low-income housing at their own expense. At that point, those suburbs would have to direct advertising to potential minority occupants in the Greater Philadelphia region. Essentially, this is what HUD has imposed on Westchester County, New York, the most famous dry-run for AFFH.
In other words, by obligating all localities receiving HUD funding to compare their demographics to the region as a whole, AFFH effectively nullifies municipal boundaries. Even with no allegation or evidence of intentional discrimination, the mere existence of a demographic imbalance in the region as a whole must be remedied by a given suburb. Suburbs will literally be forced to import population from elsewhere, at their own expense and in violation of their own laws. In effect, suburbs will have been annexed by a city-dominated region, their laws suspended and their tax money transferred to erstwhile non-residents. And to make sure the new high-density housing developments are close to “community assets” such as schools, transportation, parks, and jobs, bedroom suburbs will be forced to develop mini-downtowns. In effect, they will become more like the cities their residents chose to leave in the first place.
It’s easy to miss the de facto absorption of local governments into their surrounding regions by AFFH, because the rule disguises it. AFFH does contain a provision that allows individual jurisdictions to formally join a regional consortium. Yet the rule leaves it up to local authorities to decide whether to enter regional groupings — or at least the rule appears to make participation in regional decision-making voluntary. In truth, however, just by obligating grantees to compare their housing to the demographics of the greater metropolitan area, and remedy any disparities, HUD has effectively turned every suburban jurisdiction into a helpless satellite of its nearby city and region.
We can see this, because the final version of AFFH includes much more than just the provisions of the rule itself. The final text of the regulation incorporates summaries of the many public comments on the preliminary rule, along with replies to those comments by HUD. This amounts to a running dialogue between leftist housing activists trying to make the rule more controlling, local bureaucrats overwhelmed by paperwork, a public outraged by federal overreach, and HUD itself.
Read carefully, the section of the rule on “Regional Collaboration and Regional Analysis” (especially pages 188–203), reveals one of AFFH’s key secrets: It doesn’t really matter whether a local government decides to formally join a regional consortium or not. HUD can effectively draft any suburb into its surrounding region, just by forcing it to compare its demographics with the metropolitan area as a whole.
At one point (pages 189–191), for example, commenters directly note that the obligation to compare local and regional data, and remedy any disparities, amounts to forcing a jurisdiction to ignore its own boundaries. Without contradicting this assertion, HUD then insists that all jurisdictions will have to engage in exactly such regional analysis.
Comments from leftist housing activists repeatedly call on HUD to pressure local jurisdictions into regional planning consortia. At every point, however, HUD declines to demand that local governments formally join such regional collaborations. Yet each time the issue comes up, HUD assures the housing activists that just by compelling local jurisdictions to compare their demographics with the region as a whole, suburbs will effectively be forced to address demographic disparities at the total metropolitan level (e.g., page 196).
When housing activists worry that a suburb with few poor or minority residents will argue that it has no need to develop low-income housing, HUD makes it clear that the regulation as written already effectively forces all suburbs to accommodate the needs of non-residents (pages 198–199). Again, HUD stresses that the mere obligation to analyze, compare, and remedy demographic disparities at the local and regional levels amounts to a kind of compulsory regionalism.
HUD’s language is coy and careful. The Obama administration clearly wants to avoid alarming local governments, so it underplays the extent to which they have been effectively dissolved and regionalized by AFFH. At the same time, HUD wants to tip off its leftist allies that this is exactly what has happened.
At one level, then, the apparatus of formal and voluntary collaboration in a regional consortium is a bit of a ruse. AFFH amounts to an annexation of suburbs by cities, whether the suburbs like it or not. Yet the formal, regional groupings enabled by the rule are far from harmless.
Comments from housing advocates (pages 194–197), for example, chide HUD for failing to include a mention in AFFH of the hundreds of federally-funded regional plans already being developed by leftist activists across the country (the “Sustainable Communities Regional Planning Grant” program). These plans entail far more than imposing low-income housing quotas on the suburbs. They embody the regionalist program of densifying housing in suburb and city alike, and they structure transportation spending in such a way as to make suburban living far less convenient and workable. HUD replies that these plans can indeed be used by regional consortia to fulfill their obligations under AFFH.
So a city could formally join with some less-well-off inner-ring suburbs and present one of these comprehensive regionalist dream-plans as the product of its consortium. At that point, HUD could pressure reluctant upper-middle-class suburbs to embrace the entire plan on pain of losing their federal funds. In this way, AFFH could force the full menu of regionalist policies—not just low-income housing quotas—onto the suburbs.
There are plenty of ways in which HUD can pressure a suburb to bend to its will. The techniques go far beyond threats to withhold federal funds. The recent Supreme Court decision in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project has opened the door to “disparate impact” suits against suburbs by HUD and private groups alike. That is, any demographic imbalance, whether intentional or not, can be treated by the courts as de facto discrimination.
Just by completing the obligatory demographic analysis demanded by AFFH—with HUD-provided data, and structured according to HUD requirements—a suburb could be handing the government evidence to be used in such a lawsuit. Worse, AFFH demands that suburbs account for their demographic disparities, and forces them to choose from a menu of HUD-provided explanations. So if a suburb follows HUD’s lead and formally attributes demographic “imbalances” to its zoning laws, the federal government has what amounts to a signed confession to present in a disparate-impact suit seeking to nullify local zoning regulations. With a (forced) paper “confession” from nearly every suburb in the country in hand, HUD can use the threat of lawsuits to press reluctant municipalities to buy into a regional consortium’s every plan.
Regionalists consider the entire city-suburb system bigoted and illegitimate, so there are few local governments that HUD would not be able to slap with a disparate-impact suit on regionalist premises. It’s unlikely that any suburb has a perfect demographic and “asset” balance in every category. All HUD has to do is decide which suburban governments it wants to lean on. With every locality vulnerable to a suit, every locality can be made to play the regionalist game.
Leftist housing activists worry that AFFH never specifies the penalties a suburb will face for imbalances in its housing patterns. These activists just don’t get it. A thoughtful reading of AFFH, including its extraordinary “dialogue” section, makes it clear that HUD can go after any suburb, any time it wants to. The controlling consideration will be politics. HUD has got to boil the frog slowly enough to prevent him from jumping.
It will take time for the truth to emerge. Just by issuing AFFH, the Obama administration has effectively annexed America’s suburbs to its cities. The old American practice of local self-rule is gone. We’ve switched over to a federally controlled regionalist system. Now it’s strictly a question of how obvious Obama and the Democrats want to make this change — and when they intend to bring the hammer down. The only thing that can restore local control is joint action by a Republican president and a Republican congress to rescind AFFH and restrict the reach of disparate impact litigation. We’ll know after November 8, 2016.
America Overthrown: How the U.S. Government Careened Out of Control
Author, historian and researcher Garland Favorito presents facts which refute the “official narrative” about the causes, the purpose and the outcome of the American Civil War.
In this presentation Garland Favorito documents dozens of U.S. Constitutional violations committed during the 1860s against millions of Americans in both the north and south. Garland will show how those violations established precedents for today and provide an overwhelming array of facts leading to a stunning conclusion: Our Union was not actually preserved but instead, the principles upon which it was founded were overthrown.
A must see for must for political activists. This will help many understand why our federal government careened out of control over the last 150 years and lay a foundation for what can be done about it.
Restore and Preserve the Constitution Event Video
Dangers of the Article V Convention of States
Media Contacts
Jane Yandow, janeyandow@gmail.com, 770-815-5599
Field Searcy, info@indefenseofliberty.tv, 678-525-7072
For Immediate Release February 6, 2015
Dangers of the Article V Convention of States and Understanding the Facts Public Forum: February 12th
Most people are not aware that the Georgia Legislature adopted legislation in the last session calling for an Article V Convention of States for the purpose of amending the U.S. Constitution. The recently formed Committee to Restore and Preserve the Constitution will host their second public forum on Thursday, February 12th at 6:30 p.m. at Taylor Farm Pavilion on 201 Lucas Rd., SW in Cartersville, Georgia 30120. The Committee is a strong supporter and defender of the U. S. Constitution.
Guest Speaker Publius Huldah, a retired attorney and renowned lecturer on the Constitution, will give a discourse on the “Dangers of the Article V Convention of States and Understanding the Facts.” Her documented information will provide attendees with an insight on how the States and citizens can peacefully restore Federalism, the Rule of Law and the individual rights of American citizens. Included are the concerns of calling for an Article V Convention and the multiple reasons it is not advisable to do so at this time.
Former U.S. Congressman, Paul Broun, will share his plan on how Americans can best work together to restore Constitutional principles. Prior to the Forum, he will be available at 6:30 p.m. to meet and discuss various issues the public may have on this volatile subject. Attendees are also invited to come at the same time for coffee, light refreshments and to check out the vendors’ booths which will have an assortment of related material for sale.
Debbie Harris-Staver, the organization’s founder said “the goal of the event is for attendees to leave with an increased understanding of the dangers involved with a convention called by Congress and also recognize that there are safe solutions the states can utilize to rein in the Federal Government’s continued violations of our Constitution.” (For information call 770-435-4558 or 770-815-5599)
For more information visit the Restore and Preserve the Constitution Facebook page.
Permission granted for reprint and distribution. Please forward.
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Sent on behalf of the Committee to Restore and Preserve the Constitution, an all-volunteer grassroots group dedicated to defending the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Our goal is have the states assert and implement their right and duty to contain the federal government within its constitutional bounds.
Repeal Regionalism Presentation
Field Searcy, of RepealRegionalism.com, explains how the regionalist mindset is deteriorating our republic by robbing elected representatives and citizens of their power to vote and breaking down borders into regions that cross state boundaries. What Field discusses can be seen at all levels of government in many towns across our country.
Freedom of Speech is Not Politically Correct
ARC Public Comment Policy Falls Short
By Field Searcy
September 28, 2014
Last Wednesday, twelve private citizens addressed the Atlanta Regional Commission about the adoption of a more friendly public comment policy at the monthly board meetings. For some on the board, the comments were not welcomed. Maybe they were offended by the tone or the political correctness. Maybe the words cut to close too home. Or, maybe they’ve forgotten the price that was paid to secure the right.
The very foundation of the First Amendment was the right of political speech of the people to petition their government or challenge its authority. The ARC receives federal, state and local money. Its existence is the creature of government legislation at the state and federal level even its structure violates the republican form of government. In every way, it is bound by the Constitution for the United States and the Georgia Constitution. In fact, the board members all swear an oath of allegiance to the same.
While all the ARC board members have busy lives and political careers, they should never be too busy to hear from the people that have delegated representative authority to them.
Indeed, the policy adopted is more liberal than the previous policy which required a 10 day notice, a motion by a board member, a second and a 2/3rd’s vote. The new policy on public comment remains inadequate for the following reasons.
- For a regional commission for 10 counties and a metropolitan planning organization (MPO) of 20 counties representing more than 5 million people, allowing a total of only 10 minutes with up to 2 minutes per person is not sufficient. Even Cobb County, which has recently been under fire for limiting public comment, has a more liberal policy.
- Given the limited amount of time allotted for public comment, safeguards should have been included to allow time for all points of view to be heard. Witness the backlash that was caused in Cobb by stacking of the deck with supporting voices against the citizens with opposing views. A true consultative approach of allowing differing opinions should be protected. A wise person once said “The shining spark of truth, cometh forth only after the clash of differing opinions.”
- Public comment should be guaranteed directly in the ARC governing bylaws rather than a policy that can be changed “from time to time.”
The ARC Board passed the new policy with a vote of 19-7. We don’t believe the 7 that voted “no” are against free speech. Quite the contrary, we believe they wanted the sounding committee to rework the policy with some of the reasons cited above in mind. We salute them for their courage to not vote in lockstep with the rest. This was really the significant event since rarely is there ever a dissenting vote on any ARC Board decisions.
For too long, the people have been asleep and silent; not paying attention to what our elected representatives have been doing. We were too busy or too trusting to notice that authority was being subverted to unelected persons that cannot be held accountable to the people.
That is no longer the case. All across the spectrum, a political awakening is taking shape. The citizens are coming together, rediscovering that “We The People” are the sovereigns’ of the government and are reclaiming our rightful place to keep the government accountable and safeguard our liberties.
Field Searcy, a Cobb citizen, represents RepealRegionalism.com an education campaign by the Transportation Leadership Coalition, LLC which led the grassroots effort against the Regional Transportation Tax (TSPLOST) in 2012.
Permission to reprint is granted with full attribution.
ARC Prepares to Adopt New Bylaws
The Atlanta Regional Commission is drafting a new set of bylaws for their governing board. The following remarks are a list of critical issues raised at a recent ARC meeting.
CRITICAL BYLAWS ISSUES
- Bylaws don’t provide term limits for appointed members. Some citizen members have served for 15 years. In fact, 16 of the 39 Board members are not elected by the citizens of any jurisdiction. Research has shown that citizen appointed members attend ARC meetings more often than elected county representatives. Yet, appointed citizen members are not accountable to the voters or taxpayers.
- Past and current ARC Chairmen are appointed chairmen of Community Improvement Districts. The Georgia Constitution and Georgia Law prove that CID’s are political subdivisions. The ARC has violated its own bylaws since citizen “members at large may hold no elective or appointed public office nor be employed by any political subdivision of the area”. Even Lynne Rainey, attorney that setup most all of the CID’s in Georgia and is currently counsel to those CID’s calls them a “government entity” on his website. He’s probably the leading expert on CID’s in Georgia and I think he would know.
- Further, the Georgia Transportation Infrastructure Bank was setup to provide funds for government units which includes CID’s. This is in O.C.G.A 32-10-122. If CID’s are not a political subdivision as you say, the CID’s might need to seek legal counsel on how to return the money they’ve received to avoid legal consequences!
- New Governance Committee creates an excessive centralization of power into the chairman’s role with no established term limits. Chairman may appoint members outside of the current duly elected county commissioners and mayors. To quote one of the Bylaws Committee members, “once a slate is nominated, the tendency is to accept.” The Governance Committee structure removes accountability to the public.
- One of the authors of the proposed bylaws has said that creating the Governance Committee with membership appointed by the Chairman is “more efficient”. Centralized power is always more efficient. Top down centralization is more efficient and I’m sure it begins in this benign way. But as this organization evolves and more authority is centralized into regional governance, given the right “crisis” the more efficient path is usually always taken. But that’s not how our system of government works where power rests with the people.
- ARC directs federal money toward transportation projects within CID’s. When the chairman of the ARC can be the chairman of a CID and also be employed by a firm that has major real estate investments in the CID, this creates a potential to steer funding that benefits investments in the CID. Or worse, the opportunity for inside deals to favored business interests. This inhibits free market competition.
The people gave you authority by electing your to represent them in your county and city, why are you giving up your authority to the chairman’s role?
With secret stadium deals and blocking of public comment, the denial of open records request for public private partnerships, and now insider land deals to sell Ft. McPhearson for pennies on the dollar, the citizens have a right to be distrustful.
The citizens of Georgia and metro Atlanta want and expect open and transparent government with a say. We certainly don’t need more centralized governance that is un-elected and unaccountable.
Cobb County Board of Commissioners Blocks Opportunity for Dissent
Read the stunning rebuke of the Cobb County Board of Commissioners by the Atlanta Journal & Constitution as well as Chairman Tim Lee’s continued excuses for the process. These are behind the pay wall. You can comment here or on AJC if you have access.
Posted: 12:00 a.m. Saturday, June 14, 2014
Atlanta Journal Constitution
Cobb Chairman Blocks Public Comment on Lobbyist Contract
Last Tuesday night, the Cobb Board of Commissioners approved a contract for $168,000 to the local firm Garrett McNatt Hennessey & Carpenter to lobby for federal government grants and influence at the state capitol. Moments earlier the BOC had closed out public comment on any topic after hearing 12 supporters shower praise, admiration and thanks on the Cobb BOC for negotiating the funding for public financing of a private sports team. Not one dissenting comment could be heard on any other county business because the BOC had closed out any further public comment. Even after asking the county manager and two commissioners for permission to speak on the lobbyist contract, Chairman Lee wanted to know why I waited until that night and that he’d “think about it”. I told him that the agenda was not dropped until after business hours on Friday. This shows a lack of leadership and disenfranchises citizens of their right to speak, period.
Under the Georgia Constitution, Section I, Paragraph IX, the people have a right to petition those vested with the powers of government for redress of grievances. That is, in all counties except Cobb, where the people were also blocked from opposing comment on a seemingly small outsourced contract for lobbying services.
The $168,000 contract seems insignificant in comparison to the larger Braves financing deal but the impact could be just as big. One of the main lobbying efforts for the county would be for federal assistance on a $500 billion dollar bus rapid transit (BRT) system that would run from the Arts Center in downtown Atlanta to Kennesaw State University. The BRT system will likely require additional tax revenue to subsidize the total cost and ongoing operation of the project.
That’s the problem. Taking federal grants and incentives in the first place usually obligate taxpayers to additional unfunded expenditures. It’s not appropriate to spend taxpayer money to lobby for incentives that will ultimately cost the taxpayer more money on projects they may not want. But then again, Chairman Lee is not concerned about what the citizens want, just as long as the Chamber of Commerce and Cumberland CID (both unelected organizations) get their agenda passed.
Research handed out by the Transportation Leadership Coalition (TLC), a group which fought the TSPLOST in 2012 and was successful in blocking passage in 9 out of 12 regions, shows that taxpayers are already paying elected officials a combined $10,027,596 annually for elected representation at the federal, state and local level. This figure includes salaries and office expenses for US senators, US representatives, state senators, state representatives, and Cobb county commissioners.
Based on additional research by the TLC, it’s estimated that the salaries and office budget for the chairman and commissioners is around $1,198,557 annually. Notwithstanding the arguments against the county hiring a lobbyist firm to seek federal grants, why should Cobb taxpayers give the county commissioners more money to do their job of contacting state and federal legislators?
The county is already a member of the Association of County Commissions of Georgia which lobbies for the county’s interest at the state level. One has to ask why the county needs to hire another firm to do the job expected of county commissioners and employees.
There are still other questions to be answered. Why should Cobb taxpayers pay a lobbyist $168,000 to get federal incentives for a ½ billion dollar boondoggle BRT system that will require more taxes to subsidize in perpetuity? Was this lobby contract put on that agenda so that it could be overshadowed by the Braves bond financing approval? Isn’t the Garrett firm the same group hired to promote the failed TSPLOST? One wonders if they will do a better job the second time around. Is it possible this is being done because the local Cobb legislative delegation is not in agreement with what the county commission is doing? Is this a way for them to circumvent the Cobb delegation and strong arm the state legislature?
We elect representatives to work for the people not to work against us in creating additional tax burdens. No wonder public trust in government is at an all-time low. We’ve come to expect large document dumps after hours on holiday weekends from the federal government in Washington. Is this going to be the “Cobb way” of doing the peoples’ business? We’re seeing locally how public officials negotiate secret deals with multi-million dollar private entities outside of public review and transparency. These are touted as great models of public/private partnerships that create jobs and grow the economy. Yet, this PPP looks more like private profits, power, and politics than anything benefiting the public. Now we see the blocking of public comment that opposes the actions of local government which seems reminiscent of the all-powerful oligarchs of Soviet days. What’s next?
The Illusion of Choice
Following the fall of the Soviet Union, Oleg Ivutin’s childhood home became part of Russia on the border with China. He sees growing similarities between the USSR that he remembers and the USA today. What this powerful interview and montage of a scripted message delivered to hundreds of thousands of viewers by different various local news stations around the country and ask yourself, who’s really writing the news! The full infographic also reinforces the message that we are being controlled. Download full infographic here. Source: Frugal Dad.
Oleg Ivutin 1 from Wonderland on Vimeo.