Good local planning is facing another bogus attack this year in the Florida Legislature.
A pair of bills (HB 207, SB 362) propose to require local governments to adopt a private property rights element to their growth plans even to the point of dictating how the language in the growth plan should read. Once the element is added, the rest of the plan and the corresponding development regulations have to be revised to conform.
The language is obviously aimed at protecting development interests rather than private property rights in general.
Here’s why.
The effects of planning decisions and regulations can cut both ways when it comes to how they affect private property owners.
The approval of one person’s development plan could come at the expense of neighboring property owners.
The most recent case of these competing property rights claims occurred in an application heard recently by the Polk County Planning Commission to turn a planned suburban shopping center into an industrial park even though it is bordered by single-family homes on three sides.
But more broadly, the idea that private property rights are routinely ignored by local officials is absurd.
The Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution prohibits the government from taking private property without just compensation.
The question that often comes up in this discussion is what exactly constitutes a taking.
At the heart of this latest assault on growth planning is the debate over whether zoning and planning regulations are a threat to private property rights rather than a system that protects them.
If there’s a serious dispute over this issue, it will end up in court.
These bills that set up some made-up standard for protecting private property rights against zoning and development regulations won’t change that.