Conservatives and right-of-center types tend to believe in the Jeffersonian principle that “the government closest to the people serves the people best.” As brilliant as Thomas Jefferson was, he couldn’t possibly get everything right, and on this count, he’s only about half correct.
Sure, it’s easier to march down to city hall and complain about grimy restrooms at the community center or a broken street light down the block than it is to schlep to Washington and get an hour of undivided time with the local congressman to grouse about the federal deficit. And smaller government units tend to be more efficient in providing services.
So local control does have some advantages, though it doesn’t guarantee results. It’s unfortunate but true that “The Body That Governs Closest … doesn’t always do its job,” as a City Journal article noted, especially in localities where the “leaders” are more concerned with global issues such as climate change than they are with trash piling up on sidewalks.
Neither is local control a foundational principle. Liberty, however, was in 1776 and still is today, and that principle should override everything else in making public policy.
Our federal system does more than just allow the states to compete with each other, to act as laboratories free to “try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country,”, per U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis’ famous dissent in a 1932 case. Federalism is also a safeguard of freedom: Through the diffused power of this governance structure, the nation’s founders’ goal was to protect liberty.
In our system, cities (and counties) have a different relationship with states than states do with the federal government. They “are generally the primary territorial-administrative” subdivisions of their respective states, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Because states grant power to these subdivisions, they can also take their powers away.
So how can this framework improve cities?
It can do so by freeing them from barriers erected by local governments. States should be a check on the excesses of cities, liberating millions from local over taxation and rules that limit what they can do on their own property (which in effect are government takings). State lawmakers should always be ready to halt local employment regulations that curb hiring, efforts to “manage” growth, aspirations to be municipal nannies and measures to supervise commerce (often for the benefit of someone close to those in power).
Maybe the most visible local violations of liberty are zoning laws – overly rigorous building standards and construction permitting processes, all of which restrict housing development and limit how land owners are able to use and dispose of their property. For instance, when Huntington Beach refused to comply with state housing law that gave developers more freedom to build, Sacramento stepped in and made sure the city was, in the words of Gov. Gavin Newsom, “held to account.”
City Attorney Michael Gates complained that the state “came in with a sledgehammer.” Unfortunately, it seems that that’s what was needed to force Huntington Beach, a red suburban city in a blue state, to recognize property rights.
If this can occur in deep blue California, then it can also happen in the blue cities that are out of sync with the red states that surround them.
It’s not only developers who can benefit from state-level intervention. Unbound from local government restrictions, entrepreneurs, innovators, developers and even the ordinary citizen with an extraordinary idea can change the face of cities.
In theory and in practice, liberated cities are more pleasant places to live in. They will have more mixed-used districts; they develop more organically (and therefore more interestingly); there’s less conflict with authorities; institutions regain their independence; city halls are more accommodating to needed political reforms; thinkers and doers can create a dynamism that would have been impossible under city fathers who hold tightly to their power over others.
State preemption could, as well, protect local residents from maddening, inconvenient and unnecessary plastic bag bans. This happened in, no surprise, Texas.
If a city or county violates the liberty of its residents, those who work there, as well as those who would invest and develop in the community, then the state has not only the authority but the obligation to unwind the constraints. The cities will resist but there needs to be a shift toward greater liberty no matter how uncomfortable such a “revolution” might be.
Kerry Jackson is the William Clement Fellow in California Reform at the Pacific Research Institute.
