Local control whittled away again
Um, yeah, I agree with the other local governments in thinking this is atrocious. While I sympathize with the notion that water planning is regional, my quibble would be that, well, we already know that. The Upper Oconee Water Authority has been working diligently on our water woes for quite some time, so for the Georgia General Assembly to swoop in and say 'what you guys need is another level of bureaucracy and approval from the EPD to do anything' is absurd.
Why in the world should the state tell local communities how and when they can conserve water? We're not talking about them not restricting, but exactly the opposite. Here we have state officials telling local communities that they know best how the latter should conserve, which is preposterous (though right in line with almost everything else the state has advocated since the GOP took over underneath Gold Dome).
We do we even have cities and towns and counties anymore? Let's just become the Unified Fiefdom of Georgia and be done with this whole charade.
Why in the world should the state tell local communities how and when they can conserve water? We're not talking about them not restricting, but exactly the opposite. Here we have state officials telling local communities that they know best how the latter should conserve, which is preposterous (though right in line with almost everything else the state has advocated since the GOP took over underneath Gold Dome).
We do we even have cities and towns and counties anymore? Let's just become the Unified Fiefdom of Georgia and be done with this whole charade.
posted by Jmac at 9:34 AM
10 Comments:
Apparently, someone needs to clue the Georgia GOP in on the fact that regional is not synonymous with state. I was stupid enough to think that something called "Upper Oconee Basin Water Authority" which, according to the article is "a regional partnership between Athens-Clarke, Barrow, Jackson and Oconee counties" represented a regional approach instead of a local one. Apparently I was mistaken!
Guys, come on. I agree with the substance of your defense of "local control" wholeheartedly. But this issue has been "settled" since, oh, about 1865. Local control? Yeah, we're not so much for it. Brought to you by the "progressives" of the 19th century, and still brought to you by progressives right up into the reign of Bush II. Now, with a "conservative" in the white house and "conservatives" running many state governments, all of a sudden progressives are retreating to the ideal of cozy little liberal hamlets, giving local operation to their political theory since the more central authorities are a hard sell (for now). But where was all of this concern for local control, say, during that "great" decade of liberal icon-making, the 1960s? And if you think I'm just making a thinly veiled appeal for segregation, think again. Racialism can go to hell wiht all the rest of it, and I cry no tears for Jim Crow . But the WAY in which we accomplish our political ends matters, which is kind of the point of "local control" theory isn't it? X might be a good idea, but really it should be decided by each community for itself, and not imposed from outside by a 'big' authority. Sounds great to me, and very conservative in that Lord Acton, Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk sort of way. But all this shock, shock!, from 2008 liberals at the loss of local control is bemusing.
Liberals wrote the playbook on taking away local control. Now a different set of incompetent meddlers is running the show. Welcome to the bed you made.
I might point out that some local communities are just as stupid about their water situation as the general assembly. Rather than saying, "Local control is always good!" or "Local control is always bad!" maybe we should be arguing in favor of smart control depending on the case.
IMO, the state will do a better job of managing this than many of the locals will. I know that more than a few cities are thinking about watering restrictions primarily in terms of the revenue they lose.
I've never been a fan of hyper local control for much of anything. Most localities lack people with specialized knowledge necessary to manage the programs we hand to them, most are too small to manage programs with any economies of scale (in Georgia anyway, what with 159 counties and 435 or so cities), and none of them will "do the right thing" for the region or state if it is against their own narrow interest.
decon
This is all about the "green industry" getting to the legislature, since they give big bucks to (mostly) Republican candidates.
I'm for the green industry on this one, I think it is fundamentally unfair that residential users have to base their rates on winter average usage and businesses and institutions get an annual average to work from.
I did the math, and the 400 gallons that are allowed per month, or 3,000 cubic feet, is doable, in the winter time, for a single person.
So that exception is helpful, but the problem is that my house and my Dad's place haven't had our meters read in MONTHS. We keep getting our bills in round numbers, like 150, or 250, every single month, and I can tell by lifting up my metal lid that the dirt is so thick on my meter that there's no way anyone has looked at it in months. I didn't even wipe away the dirt so that if/when they realize what I've actually been using, I'll have grounds for appeal.
They need to read every meter, every month, under these circumstances, and my Dad and I, who each live alone, have gotten exactly the same bills for the past 5 or 6 months. How is it that they are guessing at what we're using, and yet not smart enough to at least put in an occassional odd number of usage?
I don't trust the water authority people, at all. I think they come by once or twice a year, and I'm going to raise holy heck when they suddenly send me a bill for what they should have been billing me for all along. So will my Dad, he's even er, thriftier than I am, he's very proud that he uses 100 less cubic feet every month than I apparently do. I tell him it's cuz I bathe, and do my laundry at home instead of dropping off my clothes at Ringers every week. lol...
Okay, not signing my name to this one, love ya Dad....
Hillary, the "payoff" of local control is not that every locality will act wisely, but that by "letting a thousand blossoms bloom" you maximize liberty and prosperity overall. Communities that do outrageous things (like ban coffee, say) will hopefully pay a price in the form of less people wanting to live there. And, in any case, it's only one community that now suffers under the stupidity of prohibition, rather than the whole country being subjected to the foolishness. When we play the "big" game, we guarantee that whatever stupid scheme ends up winning the beauty contest will become everyone's problem.
Remember, local control is fundamentally and historically a "conservative" issue. It is rooted in pessimism about human nature and about the ability of powerful men to "fix" everybody else's lives especially. Keeping control as local as possible makes it easier for the average person to live with a few more inches between his face and tyranny. But it is not meant to be a guarantee. It's not a utopian thing, local control. It's an "aboslute power corrupts" thing. It is still possible, maybe, to fight city hall. It is not possible at all to fight the Dome in Atlanta or the big mansion and money in D.c.
Xon, it's not that I don't understand that there are costs and benefits to local control. It's that I don't see why it has to be an all or nothing choice.
Well, if you are saying that certain things can be left to less local authorities, then that is just good old fashioned republicanism (not the lowercase 'r'). Sure. But I'm not familiar with anyone who argues that everything is supposed to be local. So the false choice of all or nothing is not a false choice that anyone is being forced to make here.
that should be "note the lowercase 'r'"....
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