In a stunning turnaround, the RI Tea Party today made
a full-throated endorsement of some of the most intrusive government
regulations on the books.
In a fundraising email, the group called on
its supporters to “…rise up against this assault on everything you’ve worked
your entire life to earn” — by defending existing zoning and land-use
regulations throughout the suburban and rural parts of our state.
For years, suburban communities in Rhode Island (and elsewhere)
have stood firmly against affordable housing through land use regulations
demanding such things as minimum lot sizes, height restrictions, and
prohibitions on multi-family housing.
Making it perfectly clear that
land-owners’ rights to property are not absolute, these zoning regulations set
very clear limits on what can and cannot be built on a piece of land, the key
reason it is such a surprise to see these restrictions endorsed by the RI
Tea Party and other “property rights” defenders.
There is demand for affordable housing in almost every community in Rhode
Island. Were the housing market a free market, it would be built, and there
would be affordable housing all over the state. But in the suburban and rural
communities, local land use regulations often prevent such housing from being built
anywhere in town.
This is exactly what RhodeMapRI proposes — in the very passage
the RI Tea Party quotes in their fundraising email shown here — and perhaps is
why the plan enrages them so.
Apparently they prefer the old restrictions on
market forces to new ones.
Rumor had it that this endorsement would have come out a week or
two ago, before the RhodeMapRI plan was approved by the RI Planning Council,
but that there were delays in filing the paperwork necessary to renounce the
group’s previously held pro-market, anti-regulation, views.
For the RI Tea Party to endorse the status quo of zoning
regulation was a surprise for many local observers. As one put it,
“It’s really remarkable how flexible they are. It’s almost as if the political
philosophy they espouse is just a cover for, well, something else.”
Another man on the street said, on the contrary, it was laudable
for the group to be flexible about the government regulations they hated. “It’s
the mark of a sophisticated mind that it can believe two completely
contradictory ideas at the same time.
Somebody smart said that once, wasn’t it
Socrates or George Washington or someone like that?” He went on to say, “It’s
like Mitch McConnell running against Obamacare in Kentucky while endorsing, and
even defending, KyNect, Kentucky’s popular Obamacare exchange. If that kind of
flexibility is good enough for Mitch McConnell, it’s good enough for the RI Tea
Party!”
A random woman accosted on the street said, “Let go of me!”
Tom Sgouros is a freelance
engineer, policy analyst, and writer. Check out his new book, "Checking the Banks: The
Nuts and Bolts of Banking for People Who Want to Fix It" from Light
Publications.