Is Local Control Still Conservative?

Discussion in 'West Mall' started by Mr. Deez, Apr 17, 2015.

  1. Mr. Deez

    Mr. Deez Beer Prophet

    The Texas House has voted to preempt an ordinance enacted by that bastion of Bolshevism, the City of Denton, to ban fracking. http://www.texastribune.org/2015/04/17/texas-house-drill-denton-fracking-bill/

    Forget the merits of fracking and whether or not it should be banned. That's not the point. There was a time when conservatives used to hail the virtues of local control, and that seems to have stopped. Why the change?
     
  2. NJlonghorn

    NJlonghorn 2,500+ Posts

    The entire "local control" mantra is a façade in modern politics. "Hailing the virtues of local control" is something politicians do when they have local control. There aren't many ideological purists willing to lose an issue on the merits for the sake of defending local control.
     
  3. Mr. Deez

    Mr. Deez Beer Prophet

    Probably right, but it's frustrating to me. When I "came of age" politically back in the early to mid '90s, a common theme among conservatives was that the best governance came from governments that were closest to the people. I think that's part of the rationale for the Tenth Amendment as well. That was the force behind converting the federal welfare programs into state programs and eliminating federal mandates (especially unfunded mandates) on state and local governments. I thought that was smart policy then and would be smart policy now. Do city councils and school districts do stupid things sometimes? Yes, but there's a mechanism for dealing with that - elections.

    Admittedly, there is another side to this. Texas has two "uniform" election dates. (I think the rednecks forgot that "uni" means one, not two.) Many cities and school districts choose to have their elections in May of odd-numbered years, when very few people are thinking about elections. That leads to absurdly low voter turnout, so the claim that the local officials are true representatives of their municipalities is a bit dubious. Nevertheless, the answer isn't to gut the local governments' power. It is to make them stand for election on the real election day in November.
     
  4. zork

    zork 2,500+ Posts

    Local can mean many things of course. Doesn't the Texas Railroad Commision generally deal with this in Texas?
     
  5. Mr. Deez

    Mr. Deez Beer Prophet

    The RRC regulates oil and gas. However, that doesn't mean cities have no role within their own municipalities. Obviously, cities use their zoning authority to regulate where you can drill for oil and gas. Admittedly, I'm not an O&G lawyer, but if the City of Denton didn't have the authority to ban fracking in their city limits, then the oil and gas industry could have sued them over the ordinance. They wouldn't have had to go to the trouble or wait for the Legislature to act.
     
  6. Larry T Spider

    Larry T Spider 100+ Posts

    In education in Texas, it is certainly the republicans pushing for more state control of things as opposed to local districts. You can argue whether or not this is beneficial/necessary but it is a departure from local control. For the record, I am not just talking about districts dealing with corruption such as Beaumont; it is something that all districts are dealing with.
     
  7. Monahorns

    Monahorns 5,000+ Posts

    I think local control is a conservative principle. I think the other question is are the people trying to eliminate fracking bans conservative politicians? The slippery slope with being pro-business is influencing business and then fascism. On the other end of the spectrum local control isn't always "conservative" or the USSR wouldn't be named after soviets.
     
  8. Mr. Deez

    Mr. Deez Beer Prophet

    The irony of this is that 20 years ago, the opposite was true. Democrats wanted to vest authority with the State (specifically with the TEA Commissioner, not the SBOE) and did so. Then Bush ran in 1994 on the concept of local control as a conservative idea (which it was), won the election, and enacted SB 1 back in 1995. For the most part, SB 1 worked, so I don't see why we don't apply that principle in general.
     
  9. Mr. Deez

    Mr. Deez Beer Prophet

    The people trying to eliminate the fracking bans would all claim to be conservative politicians. It's mostly a bunch of Republican legislators who have the oil and gas industry's balls firmly and deeply entrenched in their mouths.
     
  10. Monahorns

    Monahorns 5,000+ Posts

    They say...
     
  11. Musburger1

    Musburger1 2,500+ Posts

    Deez, you knew the answer all along.
     
  12. Mr. Deez

    Mr. Deez Beer Prophet

    Yes, that's true. And to be clear, I don't advocate fracking bans. I have inadequate information to have an informed opinion on the issue (ditto for "climate change"), and there's so much money and politics involved that I'm skeptical of what pretty much any expert would tell me. However, that isn't the point and in fact isn't even relevant. To me, local control means the power of the local government to do something even when the state or federal government doesn't want them to. If the City of Denton acquires enough information to act on the issue of fracking on behalf of their citizens, that's their right. If they're wrong to do that, then it's up to the citizens of Denton to show up on Election Day, vote them out, and install a council that will reverse the ban. It's not up to the Legislature to sit as a "super-council" to trump their judgment altogether.
     
    Last edited: Apr 21, 2015
  13. chango

    chango 2,500+ Posts

    The Republican legislators SAY they have the oil and gas industry's balls firmly and deeply entrenched in their mouths?
     
    • Like Like x 1
  14. Monahorns

    Monahorns 5,000+ Posts

    that they are conservative
     
  15. accuratehorn

    accuratehorn 10,000+ Posts

    The conservatives just want control. If they are only in power locally, the preach local control. If they control a state, like Texas, they don't want any local control, and tout states' rights-see the City of Austin, Texas for all the examples you want. If they get national control, there won't be much talk of local or states' rights at that point. They're basically megalomaniacs who want to impose their religious views on the electorate.
     
  16. Monahorns

    Monahorns 5,000+ Posts

    First, you cease being conservative when you attempt to supersede local government with state government, or state for federal etal. At least that isn't a conservative act and once those types of actions out weigh any truly conservative actions, the politician ceases to be conservative. Power hungry, statist, etc would be more appropriate

    Second, what religious view has the "conservative" leadership of Texas imposed on you? As a Christian, I see the people of the state by and large doing what they want to do whether they are religious or not.
     
  17. zork

    zork 2,500+ Posts

    I like interstate highways but not necessarily the feds putting limits on drinking age to funding of their support/maintenance. The whole idea of unfunded mandates is very complex.(ACA medicare expansion payments just for X amount of time for example)

    Give me the case by case basis for some of this but tending to keep it local.

    You could probably fire half of the federal employees and have them re-org to a leaner and more efficient machine. Spending thousands of dollars on persimmon doors when basic doors for a hundred or two is a huge pet peeve of mine when you think about that happening for every manager level and up in the government. You could go on and on and on to revamp all levels of government to be taxpayer fund misers instead of the very little oversight situation we have now with the government purse at all levels.

    Local level is preferred but it is all broken.
     
  18. Giovanni Jones

    Giovanni Jones 2,500+ Posts

    Precisely.

    [​IMG]
     
    • Like Like x 1
  19. Mr. Deez

    Mr. Deez Beer Prophet

    It's broken in some cities, but it's up to the local citizenry to fix it. The State of Texas is broken in a lot of ways, but doesn't it piss you off when the federal government tries to "fix" it? You cited the drinking age garbage, and that's a good example.

    If the City of Austin wants to pass some liberal ordinance (such as the bag ban), I may think it's goofy, but as a homeowner in Round Rock, it's none of my business. Same goes for the fracking ban. What if you're a residential area and don't want the added traffic and don't want your drinking water poisoned? Maybe they're right and maybe they're wrong about the fracking causing poisoned drinking water, but the point is that which side of that debate is persuasive is that community's business, not the state's. Go frack outside of town.
     
  20. majorwhiteapples

    majorwhiteapples 5,000+ Posts

    I say leave Denton alone and I am as conservative as they come, and while I am Catholic I pose none of my religious beliefs on anyone. Now to Caveat that, the City of Denton should be taken off the list receiving any funds from the State of Texas in regards to other proceeds collected because of Fracking. If they don't want to Frack, then they don't get to reap the revenue benefits of said Fracking.
     
  21. zork

    zork 2,500+ Posts

    I'm trying not to get pissed off about anything government related anymore. It helps with the heartburn. As you get older you understand what you can and can't fix as just another citizen.

    These message boards are a way to communicate about what we like or don't like but I see it more today that we get what we get.

    The fracking question in Denton is not an easy one and I can see both sides. Maybe I have bias with property in another county that does allow drilling? After reading about the proposed vote to limit the drilling I remember comparing it in my mind to Boulder, Co. restrictions on just about everything.

    Hasn't the trend been lately for the feds to usurp or expand their reach no matter what the smaller division(state, county, city) says? Robinhood school funding was huge on this type of topic back in the day. The whole nanny state argument for the various issues?

    What exactly are we supposed to do about it?
     
  22. Mr. Deez

    Mr. Deez Beer Prophet

    I think that's totally fair.
     
  23. Mr. Deez

    Mr. Deez Beer Prophet

    Yes, the trend has been for the feds to usurp and expand their reach. However, the Right has generally opposed this sort of overreach not only on constitutional grounds but also on the merits. States take care of themselves better than the feds take care of them. The same logic follows downward. Cities and school districts can take care of themselves better than the state can.

    I blame plenty of bad things on the feds, but Robin Hood isn't one of them. That came about because back in the 1980s, a pretty liberal, Democratic Texas Supreme Court opened the door for school districts to sue the State over inequitable funding across district lines, and they made that ruling under state constitutional law. (The case was Edgewood ISD v. Kirby. I haven't even begun to do the case justice, because it's complicated as hell (as is school finance in general) and not really the point. However, in a nutshell, schools in property-poor districts (like Edinburg ISD) thought they were getting the shaft because they couldn't raise property tax revenue like property-rich districts (like Highland Park ISD) could. The court agreed with them and ordered the Legislature to fix it.

    The Legislature came up with a system that recaptures property tax revenue raised in property wealthy districts and sends it to property poor districts. That's what Robin Hood is, and it's not just a little bit of money. The districts that get affected have as much 45 or even 50 percent of their property tax revenue recaptured. It's a really ****** deal for them.

    What can you do about it? Well, Edgewood should be overturned. It was a weak case decided on BS grounds. You'd think that having 20+ years of a Republican Texas Supreme Court would be enough to overturn or at least dramatically water it down. It hasn't been so far, even though the issue has been before them several times. I think they like the fact that they get to dabble and assert authority over school finance, so even though they talk about how conservative they are, they preserve one of the court's most liberal and activist decisions and use it to interfere.

    If you can't dump Edgewood, then you need a constitutional amendment. What should we have instead? Well, in Deezestan, I'd eliminate property taxes, increase the sales tax, and fund the schools with it.
     
  24. Mr. Deez

    Mr. Deez Beer Prophet

    The oil and gas industry's campaign contributions paid off. Yep, balls deep.
     
    Last edited: May 21, 2015
  25. Seattle Husker

    Seattle Husker 10,000+ Posts

    LOL at this passage from the article. Do you think lobbyists wrote the legislation?

     
  26. Larry T Spider

    Larry T Spider 100+ Posts

    I am all for education finance reform. At the very least, the public should have a general understanding of how the system works. I would guess that the number of people that truly understand the current system is under 5,000 in a state of 26 million. Basically superintendents, their finance guys, some politicians and lawyers, and that's it. Its very hard for accountability to exist when nobody, including people deeply involved in education, don't understand the financing of it.

    The largest hurdle that has to be overcome is that I don't think the poor school districts would even be able to function at a basic level without outside support. I *think* the amount of money they could raise would put them in violation of many laws including class sizes, building maintenance standards, and many special education laws (federal). Most districts spend about 80% of their money on salaries and the majority of that is on teachers. They could cut some admin positions but that is usually a drop in the bucket in comparison to the budget as a whole.

    So, a lot of questions need to be answered before a new finance system can be put in place:
    Will poor districts get a similar level of funding as (but not necessarily from) rich districts?
    If yes, where does the money come from?
    If no, will they receive outside money to at least keep them in compliance with all the laws that they would likely have to break to keep their doors open?
    If no to that, then I see the Feds getting involved and scrapping the whole system.
     
  27. zork

    zork 2,500+ Posts

    Texas should sell all of the public schools performing under X level to Apple. Apple gets to train all of their "students" to put together Apple products for 2 hours each school day. One hour of "Apple time" in the morning , I'm calling it that, and one one more hour in the afternoon.

    Win/Win. RRR for the rest of the school day btw. It isn't against the child labor laws because they are being trained, they aren't really working. (wink, wink)

    Of course then you have to decide who gets the stipend from APPLE? (Wheelchair's cronies or the local vipers)
     

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