There are two questions that I promised yesterday that I would take up today about the Complete Streets ordinance recently passed at Council on 1.20.15.
The first is whether the draft ordinance was flexible enough, and the second about the costs of new roads or reconstruction that would include sidewalks or bike paths.
I read the draft that Council saw before the Tuesday vote, and I’m unpersuaded that the draft was lacking in flexibility for future planners. The 1.20.15 draft (before amendments) is embedded below.
One could argue over should or shall, but 11.51.040 E as drafted offers ample grounds to reject a bike path or sidewalk project if Council or a future one wished to do so.
More generally, I’ve contended time and again that thousands upon thousands of Whitewater residents are sharp and capable. One doesn’t need to have been a legislative aide to read or draft an ordinance for the city. There are myriad paths to an equal comprehension, to say the least.
Libertarians don’t contend it’s true that most people are smart and capable because we say so; we say that most people are smart and capable because it’s true.
On the cost side, I’m sensitive to how much this city spends, and goodness knows sidewalks are expensive.
I’d be more persuaded that the Greater Whitewater Committee (GWC), a business-advocacy 501(c)(6) organization, had lower costs in mind if they’d argued more often to keep costs lower.
I don’t recall, for example, that they argued against the approximately $2.3 million dollar East Gateway Project. (In fact, one of their members, now on Council, unsuccessfully asked for another $500,000 or so for placement of underground wiring.)
I argued against that funding, and confidently so. How is our city $2.3 million richer for that roadwork?
The GWC is free to advocate as it wishes – I’m for more, not less, speech. Let’s be clear, though. Like trade unions, business-advocacy groups, etc., represent one special-interest point of view among many others. By their very federal tax designation, they’ve a necessarily limited point of view.
Public Choice Theory properly recognizes these groups as just one more special interest among many.
Individuals at the Community Development Authority who have been for hundreds of thousands in public handouts to white-collar startups, and are now looking for yet another round of the same on the public tab, don’t seem like cost-savers.
Millions on an Innovation Center, or failed tax-incremental spending, or the endless effort to write sugary press-releases boosting these wasteful things, belie a professed commitment to smaller government.
That doesn’t mean one shouldn’t, let alone can’t, advocate for businesses (even white collar ones that help few in town). Trade unions, the business lobby, etc., all play a role in a society that recognizes rights of association.
They’re not, however, something like the Roman Curia, assisting in the work of the universal Church, so to speak.
These local groups are all just special interests, sometimes arguing for better, sometimes for worse.
The best way to show one’s genuine and convincing commitment to less spending and smaller government would be for some of these gentlemen to reject the white-collar welfare and crony capitalism of the WEDC, for example.
I’ll be waiting.