Anti-government ideas created bad initiatives

Guest Opinion
By MATTHEW REDINGER
Billings Gazette, October 9, 2006

It's high time for a reality check. I have spent my career in search for the truth as it is supported by evidence. The evidence I have seen on Constitutional Initiatives 97 and 98, and Initiative 154 lead me to the conclusion that they would be bad for us as a state and as a community.

Backers are fond of saying what they think the generally conservative people of this state want to hear. They spout platitudes ("Save our homes," etc.), but the heart of their efforts is an attempt to destroy the underpinnings of state and local government.

CI-97 has gotten a great deal of press of late, and I think we can well learn Colorado's lesson. They've been down this road, and have discovered that it is a dead end. Let's not make the same mistake.

Freemen influence seen
Backers of CI-98 fall back on that tired old refrain about judges "legislating from the bench." It's simply not that simple.

In print and radio advertisements, the supporters claim that the initiative would help remove judges who have been convicted of a crime or are negligent. This sounds good, except that there are already mechanisms in place to remove them from office. There must be more to supporters' efforts than what they claim.

This initiative exposes the Freemen influence most clearly. I don't think we should help these people do through the constitution what the Freemen failed to do through death threats.

I-154 is by far the most deceptive and dangerous of these efforts. It allows "property owners to demand and receive compensation if they believe a government action has devalued their property."

Supporters raise the very real issue of the eminent domain fights in Connecticut and Arizona. There, local governments used loopholes in the law to seize private homes to clear the way for private developments such as condominiums and business parks, which pay higher property taxes.

That cause certainly warrants our vigilant attention (fortunately, Montana law already prohibits these abuses).

But the backers of I-154 are pulling a bait-and-switch. By pointing to these high-profile cases, they are trying to distract the voters from their actual and much more insidious agenda: to use the constitution to attack zoning ordinances and thereby to bankrupt government.

If someone says they want to put a hog farm in your neighborhood, prohibited by city zoning ordinances (which are, de facto, "government action"), then this initiative would allow litigants to sue the city for their lost potential income.

The city would have to spend thousands of dollars defending zoning ordinances in court. All it would take is a few of these cases to break the city's budget.

Montana would be forced to spend scarce dollars to fight such proven polluters as cyanide heap leach gold mines because legislation making them illegal "devalues" out-of-state mining corporations' properties.

Close off river access
Another implication of the initiative would allow wealthy absentee landowners to close off public access to streams and rivers because current stream access laws may reduce their exclusive rights to their property.

We have already fought that battle, and the people of Montana have won. This initiative, in particular, is a wolf in sheep's clothing, and we know what happens when we welcome wolves into our midst.

These initiatives are financed by New York real estate tycoon Howard Rich. We should ask ourselves why he thinks he knows better than we do what is best for Montana.

Another out-of-state backer of these efforts is Grover Norquist, president of Washington, D.C.'s Americans for Tax Reform. He has called initiatives such as CI-97 the "holy grail" of tax policy.

These anti-government groups are clear about their goals. Norquist wants to starve government to the point "where we can drown it in the bathtub." Pleasant. That's just what we need in Montana!

All three of these are designed to do one thing: break government. They arise from the primordial anti-government muck from which the Freemen crawled several years ago.

We have to prove that we've learned that lesson, and won't be sucked in by their radical libertarian message. We are smarter than that. And if we aren't, and we don't mobilize against them and their out-of-state backers, then we deserve what we get.

(Matthew Redinger is a professor of history and chairs the Department of History at Montana State University-Billings. These opinions are his, and do not necessarily reflect those of MSU-B.)