What About Property Rights?
lewrockwell.com
They have been largely erased, says Steven Greenhut.
Monday, November 15, 2004
Who owns Rancho Mission Viejo?
By STEVEN GREENHUT
Columnist, The Orange County Register
I'm pleased that the Orange County Board of Supervisors acted sensibly and approved, by a unanimous vote, a plan by the Rancho Mission Viejo Co. to build 14,000 homes and 5.2 million square feet of commercial space on a 23,000-acre property.
Many of the die-hard "don't build anything" environmentalists and the NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yarders) put up a fuss, but to no avail. So now the first part of a long, costly and detailed approval process will move forward. We're 12 years into the process and someday the company will get all the necessary permits to begin building homes on the property.
What a relief.
But think about it. Several hundred people showed up at the public hearing at the Hall of Administration in Santa Ana on Monday to put in their two cents about what a private company can do with its privately owned land. Everyone seemed to have a different idea about what would be best, and few of the activist groups, council members from surrounding cities and members of the public even acknowledged that they were yammering about Someone Else's Land.
We've reached the point in America where everyone is a "stakeholder," which means that everyone has an equal say in everyone else's business. There were some pretty strange moments at the public hearing that illustrate how much the public and politicians have lost any concept about the importance of property rights in guaranteeing the essential freedoms sought by the nation's founders.
Here are some of my favorite moments:
A member of an environmental group took the podium and explained a much better alternative for the Rancho Mission Viejo Co. It's called the Wildlife Heritage Plan, and it provides for far more contiguous open space, he said. It's such a good plan that one of the other speakers changed her view in midstream. She said she had come to the dais to denounce the RMV development, but after hearing this alternative plan, she decided instead to throw her support behind it. Only problem: This wonderful new plan doesn't allow any significant development. It would be, in essence, a giant park, although its proponent was generous enough to allow the Rancho Mission Viejo Co. to build a wildlife center there!
A representative of the Natural Resources Defense Council said he preferred the same alternative plan. He proceeded to "debunk" criticism of this alternative. You see, opponents of the wilderness plan didn't like it because it would require the government to purchase property from the Rancho Mission Viejo Co. Don't worry, he said. "The county can request land to be set aside without funding." In other words, the county can simply take the property and set aside the property as open space, without paying the family anything. It's called stealing, isn't it? I believe I was the only person who laughed out loud.
Brittany McKee of Friends of the Foothills and the Sierra Club argued that it's too early in the process to act. "Why rush and vote?" she asked. "Each week goes by, new improvements are offered." Well, I suppose one could argue that 12 years into the process is early, provided one is using the length of an ice age as a standard. Those "improvements" she refers to are not really improvements but ransom demandedby environmentalists and others who are attempting to hold up the project or leverage goodies out of the O'Neill/Moiso family under threat of legal action. How would you like your project to sit there for years on end while "stakeholders" - i.e., any moron with an opinion - decide a better way to develop the property?
When a property is put up for public debate with no concern about ownership, then everyone has an idea, and oftentimes those ideas conflict with other ideas. Environmentalists argued that the plan has insufficient open space. Then advocates for government-funded low-income housing would argue that the plan doesn't incorporate enough new buildings. So, it's too dense, or not dense enough - depending on whose priorities you share. Sometimes the same speaker expressed those two diametrically opposed views in the same three-minute diatribe. One San Clemente resident strongly opposed the plan because it would destroy open space, then went on and on about the lack of affordable housing for young and old people. As Emmett Tyrrell of the American Spectator once wrote (referring to certain angry feminists), they don't know what they want, but they want it very badly.
Everyone had an angle. Seniors groups wanted more senior housing, wilderness groups wanted more trails, San Clemente officials complained that new people meant more crowded beaches, Friends of the Sea Otters wanted a salmon run (just kidding). My advice: Don't become a developer, lest you want to spend your life dealing with this Alice in Wonderland process.
San Clemente Councilman Wayne Eggleston argued that the Rancho Mission Viejo design is outmoded, based on 20th-century suburban ideals. Instead, Eggleston demanded that Rancho Mission Viejo build a "new millennium development" of the sort imagined by ... himself, I guess. Eggleston reflected the views of the "new urbanists," urban planners who want to replace suburbia with a new idea that seems a lot like an old idea - high-rise livingdevoid of the dreadful automobile. Think midtown Manhattan. Other planners echoed these views. I wanted to say: "Great. Buy your own damn property and develop it in any way you choose." Of course, the new urbanists don't actually buy things and develop them to meet the public's needs. They prefer to tell other people what to do with their property, using the force of government if possible.
My biggest disappointment came from the Mission Viejo City Council. Four of the members who attended the meeting came to power with the help of a property-rights-supporting organization known as the Committee for Integrity in Government. Unfortunately, the Gang of Four wanted to deprive Rancho Mission Viejo of its property rights, although the council members dressed up their concerns in the language of traffic mitigation.
Councilwoman Trish Kelley said the plan was $212 million shy of needed road improvements in neighboring Mission Viejo, even though county staff explained that the ranch is paying far more than its share of mitigation dollars. Councilman Lance MacLean attacked the plan, as did Mayor Gail Reavis. I hate to say this, but that behavior made me pine for the days of former Mayor Sherri Butterfield who - despite my many disagreements with her - has stuck up for the rights of the Rancho Mission Viejo Co., and for the needs of the new generation of Orange County residents who desire their piece of the American dream.
With public property, everyone gets a say. The loudest and most politically savvy voices win. But Rancho Mission Viejo is private property. The land has been owned by the same family for 122 years. The family has tended to it, planned for the future, and now has proposed an environmentally sensitive development that should be unobjectionable to anyone with a modicum of respect for private property. It will pay far more than its proper share of costs associated with the project. Two-thirds of the land will be set aside as open space. Yet it's never enough to thosewho have other preferences for the use of the land, or who don't want additional traffic or more people.
Yes, the project has to deal with real impacts on the roads and surrounding communities, but most of the complainers at the meeting were trying to impose their preferences on the land, not deal with legitimate issues.
It's a big piece of property, but that doesn't give every wannabe planner the right to dictate how it will be developed. |
