FROM WALLINGFORD - Contrasting approaches to government

As published in the Record Journal, Sunday September 18, 2011

If I were a civics teacher, a viewing of last Tuesday’s Wallingford Town Council meeting would be a class requirement, and it would serve as a textbook example of why the functions of government should be carried out at the lowest level possible or, described another way, the level closest to the people.

On the one hand were the votes to repeal Town Council decisions to lease a piece of private property for 30 years and to spend public money on its improvement or face a referendum on the issue. On the other hand, was the report on the placement of the railroad station by the project engineer for the $647 million commuter rail project where the only impact that the citizenry of Wallingford might possibly have is on its location.

When you put these two projects side by side as was done the other night, it becomes clear why so many of us advocate for leaving as much authority and responsibility at the local level of government, or at least the lowest possible level that makes sense. Our ability to enforce accountability and transparency on those that run our various governments dissipates exponentially as decisions are made by higher and most distant entities. Here are three aspects of what I mean by that:

1. The citizen’s impact on government: the Town Council made two decisions regarding the parking lot. Those decisions have been challenged by some voters. First, they were able to argue for a repeal of those decisions in an open meeting directly with the people that made them. Not having achieved that goal, they were able to secure sufficient signatures to allow every voter in Wallingford to weigh in on the issue in a referendum. The railroad project?

Well, maybe, just maybe, if, in their judgment, they deem our comments worthy, we may, just possibly, perhaps be able to get the State of Connecticut and the Federal Railroad Administration to … listen to us regarding where to locate the station. That is the sum total of citizen impact on this $647 million project. As for any other citizen comments the other night: it was “this deal is done; sit down and be quiet” time, according to one councilor’s comments.

2. How these projects are paid for: The Town Council of Wallingford is paying for the parking lot improvements immediately from a capital and non-recurring fund financed by current contributions from our Electric Division. How is the commuter railroad being paid for? Well, the State of Connecticut is borrowing its hundreds of millions from us and our children. The feds are paying their hundreds of millions of dollars with … Happy Bucks borrowed from our great grandchildren. In other words, local government finances its wishes with real money; the state with sort of real money to be paid back years from now, and the feds with … money borrowed from … well, we really don’t know, do we?

3. Direct results: Wallingford Town Council spends $500 thousand. Result: parking lot improvements that everyone who owns a car in Wallingford can use. State and feds spend one thousand times that amount and we get: a startup commuter service that will be utilized by 6,000 residents statewide. But to justify this staggering amount of money spent on benefiting so few, they trot out the old impossible-to-quantify, years-and-years down the road “economic development” chestnut.

I am not for a second suggesting that the decisions to be made in building railroads or other similarly complex undertakings be the province of local authorities. That is clearly unworkable. However, the point I am making is that, in America today, we citizens are ceding more and more authority to higher and higher levels of government.

That Town Council meeting contained two starkly contrasting approaches to government. Unless we are wise, we will lose the one and be crushed by the other.

FROM WALLINGFORD - Downtown deadlock

This week’s FROM WALLINGFORD is written by my counterpart on the column - Stephen Knight

As Published in the Record Journal Sunday December 26, 2010

Well, for now, the Incentive Housing Zone for downtown Wallingford is off the table. Monday night, the Town Council deadlocked on the issue and the Planning and Zoning Commission postponed a vote on the plan. While support for the plan seemed to be building a year ago, it was clear that that support dissipated in the intervening months. While most of the opposition seemed to center around the need for more information, I think that there are three other factors that also figured into the resultant, lukewarm support.

First of all, major changes to existing regulations have to be driven by either 1) an actual proposal put forth by an entity with means to make the project actually happen, or, 2) a consensus among those most affected that the changes are in their best interest. Neither of those conditions was in evidence. The idea appears to have come to life because some of the social engineers in Hartford passed legislation offering financial incentives to consider development of this sort. Then financial incentives that got the town to the table in the first place were drastically reduced. That left little or no impetus for changes to be made, and what little momentum that did exist died.

Secondly, there are many in Wallingford skeptical of accepting state funds for an entirely local project, and I certainly share such skepticism. When the State of Connecticut offers money to local communities, it does so in order to induce compliance with whatever grand scheme it is that they are promoting. The proverbial “strings attached” to that funding has two results: 1) the town loses control over whatever the project is and 2) the completion of the project slows to a crawl. In this case, the money that the state is offering no doubt came with an enormous set of conditions, restrictions and impediments.

As illustration, I offer you the Christian Street bridge debacle of recent years. Do you recall how long that bridge took to replace? The Town had originally sought to work through the state’s local bridge program, but the project got so bogged down in red tape that the town administration finally threw up its hands, completed its own design and installed the bridge without any state assistance for hundreds of thousands less. In the present Incentive Housing Zone case, the question had to be asked: if we take the money, how much control over the area are we ceding to the bureaucracy in Hartford? Is it really worth it?

Lastly, the linchpin of this whole redevelopment idea is the commuter rail service that is supposed to be built over the next few years. Maybe no one brought this up in Monday’s meeting, but I am beginning to doubt if this operation will ever be built. The state is facing years of multibillion dollar deficits. And, to make the problem far worse, the federal government recently turned down Connecticut’s request for additional hundreds of millions of dollars to finance the project, leaving it for the state to bear the lion’s share of funding. In other words, no one in Hartford will say it, but I think this project is stalled. If that is indeed the case, a huge incentive for creating this special zone is gone.

I take a backseat to nobody in my support for downtown Wallingford and the creation of ways to keep it healthy and attractive. Perhaps sometime in the future, this Incentive Housing Zone will be revisited and the good effort of Town Planner Linda Bush will bring a different result. At present, however, the irony seems to be that the town’s best action was to take no action.

FROM WALLINGFORD - Politics’ third rail

This week’s FROM WALLINGFORD is written by my counterpart on the column – Stephen Knight.

Eminent domain is the third rail of politics in Wallingford. There is no more thankless task for the public official here than to request a rational discussion of its use, for he has thus waded into a political swamp that is almost impossible to navigate. Within minutes, any sought-after calm, methodical discussion of the subject quickly disintegrates.

Which is why you saw otherwise lucid and articulate elected officials rhetorically head for the exits when asked about the use of eminent domain to force a conclusion of negotiations over the 10.3-acre Chichowski parcel they voted to purchase some months back. Never mind that the discussion took place in executive session. Their real reluctance to speak to this issue springs from their honest fear that no matter what is said, how articulately it is stated, or how logically the argument is made, they will be accused of being insensitive, power-hungry, rights-stealing political thugs that would steal bread from the mouths of babies if given half a chance.

This predicament is the result of two factors, one uniting and the other divisive: 1) the Kelo vs. City of New London decision having aroused the inherent skepticism Americans have of governmental power that is part of our political DNA and 2) a bit of recent history here in town when the subject last arose.

First of all, the Supreme Court decision in Kelo vs. City of New London sent a shockwave through the national political psyche. To most Americans, the decision legitimized the notion that government power may be used to seize the property of one private party and turn it over to another private party. The concept of “public purpose” was absurdly expanded at the expense of our Constitutionally-guaranteed right of due process, giving rise to a legitimate hypersensitivity to and skepticism of government and its use of power over the individual.

It is worth noting that is was a 5-4 decision, with the conservative, originalist justices decrying the decision of the liberal, Constitution-as-an-evolving-document majority. The positive we can take from this decision is that many states, including ours, have rewritten their eminent domain statutes in such a way as to prevent a recurrence of this travesty.

Secondly, the last time that eminent domain was raised here as an issue was a few years ago when the mayor, in an effort to do some long term land use planning for the town, sought to survey property in the northeast corner of the town. It was thought that possibly, in the distant future, expansion of the I-5 zone allowing industrial parks might take place assuming [note carefully] that this outcome might be the desire of the property owners at that time. At the mere mention of this request, the mayor’s primary political opponent at the time, to further his own narrow political career interests, weighed in, accusing the mayor of attempting to condemn their property. Through blatant distortion of the real issue at hand, he shamelessly manipulated the property owners into believing that they were in danger of having their property taken from them. The discussions in the Town Council were a sad three-ring circus, with the frightened, lied-to, trusting property owners railing against the innocuous survey request while he stood in the back of the auditorium smugly viewing his handiwork. It was politics at its worst, and it has poisoned the well of discussion of land use in that area to this day.

So this is the table that has been set for any discussion of eminent domain in Wallingford. Somewhere there is a balance between our individual rights as property owners and the responsibility of the community to plan its future. We can find this balance, but only if we are willing to approach it as the sophisticated, complex topic that it is. Those who will be living in our town fifty years from now are depending on our ability to do so.