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Concord
Monitor
The myth of local control
By KATY BURNS
April
10. 2005
Our
politicians pay loud lip service to the cause of home rule but, in
reality, scorn it.
Last Wednesday members
of the House of Representatives took a giant step toward undoing one of
the Legislature's more blatant attempts to bully local governments.
Whether the Senate will go along remains to be seen.
The Legislature passed a bill last year stripping Tamworth of its
ability to regulate a racetrack proposed there. Then-Gov. Craig Benson
signed it. But last week, rebelling against the recommendation of its
own committee, the House voted, 273-76, to undo that wrong.
The background: In 2003 wealthy investors bought up 251 acres in
rural Tamworth and proposed turning it into a "motorsports
park," which would allow owners of high-performance cars to put
their pricey playthings' horsepower to use. That is, by racing them. On
a specially engineered and built meandering course, or track. Ergo, a
racetrack.
Those proposing the track made it sound as if it would involve little
more than upper-crust sorts taking time on pleasant Sundays to pull out
the throttles on their Maseratis and Porsches. "Like a private golf
course country club . . . almost like a gated community," said a
lobbyist for the operators recently.
On the other hand, the operators promised at least 40 full-time and
150 part-time jobs. Their website said that members could drive
"any automobile (except SUVs, trucks or vans) or motorcycle"
on the track and that the operation would be open every day of the year
and "have amenities such as a pool, health club and restaurants as
well as a hotel." Whatever was planned wasn't little and would be
loud.
The people of Tamworth - whose last big thing was
the founding 75 years ago of a still-going summer theater by the son of
President Grover Cleveland - were more than a little alarmed, especially
since Tamworth is one of those places that still, stubbornly, eschew
zoning. But they were in luck. State law gives local communities the
right to regulate racetracks. So residents overwhelmingly adopted a
racetrack ordinance to have some control over what was built.
Okay, said the developers, but then they withdrew their application
from the Tamworth Planning Board with a vague statement that they had
"made an application . . . that exceeds our permitting needs. We
are currently reviewing our options and determining if, and or when we
need to return to the planning board."
Soon, all became clear. The people of Tamworth learned that Sen. John
Gallus - who represents Berlin, not Tamworth - had succeeded in sneaking
through a bill to define "private driving instruction and
exhibition facilities," which, the bill explicitly said, were not
racetracks (even if racing occurs on their tracks).
Such "facilities," the bill mandated, could not be
regulated by their host towns. The bill zipped through the Senate and
the House. The few legislators curious enough to ask about it were
assured by the track's representatives that the people of Tamworth (who
were notthere, probably because they were unaware of the bill's
existence) were solidly behind the project and that zoning could handle
any problems. They did not share with the lawmakers that Tamworth had no
zoning.
The people of Tamworth were blindsided. You might call it a textbook
example of how a bunch of overworked part-time legislators with precious
few independent staff resources can be played by skillful, well-paid
lobbyists.
But Wednesday's vote came about because people in other communities
began to notice what had happened to Tamworth and to worry. What if
someone came to one of their towns and tried to build a "private
driving instruction and exhibition facility" that no one wanted?
Worse, what's to stop some other state senator from slipping through
another vaguely worded statute that would take away their authority to
regulate other matters in their own towns?
What if, for example, the people in the State House - who, remember,
always know better than the people in the town offices and city halls -
decided that towns didn't have the right to ban people from carrying
guns into those same town offices and city halls? Even those in the town
of Newbury, where a deranged person did in fact shoot and kill two town
employees in 1993? How dreadful that would be!
Except, doggone it, our State House gang did indeed not long ago
decide just that, and it stripped local citizens of the right to make
any law restricting people from carrying firearms into public buildings.
Heavy hand
The truth is that in New Hampshire our politicians pay loud lip
service to local control but, in reality, scorn it. Just in the last few
years our legislators showed how little, in practice, they respect the
principle of local control of schools.
Thanks to recent legislation, even if school boards want to, they are
no longer permitted to have binding arbitration clauses in their teacher
contracts. Nor are they allowed a say in charter schools, even though
the money funding charter schools comes from their budgets. The
Legislature took their say-so away from them, just as it mandated that
the state school board approve charter schools as long as they meet
vague minimal criteria.
And if you think towns deserve a say in regulating ATV trails - even
big ATV "parks," with all their attendant ecological havoc -
you'd better get in touch with your state senators and reps pronto. The
Senate is considering Senate Bill 121, which would exempt ATV trails on
private property from having to get site-plan reviews. Take that,
Lyndeborough and Milford, who've battled for years to have some
oversight over a huge proposed ATV facility straddling the two towns'
lines.
If Tamworth succeeds in getting back a modicum of control over the
auto racetrack, it will be a rare victory, but hardly a sign of things
to come.
After all, several years ago a constitutional amendment giving New
Hampshire towns home rule -a principle taken for granted in many
Midwestern states - went down to crushing defeat. Among its fiercest
opponents were a lot of the same conservatives who love to prattle on
about the importance of local control. Perhaps no institution fought
that amendment as vigorously as the Union Leader.
That same UnionLeader last week editorially supported giving Tamworth
a measure of control in the matter of the racetrack, but it is telling
that just below that editorial was another decrying spending any more
time on "unnecessary study"of the proposed controversial
expansion of the Sunapee ski area.
Its opponents are whining, the editorial sneered, because
"creating a new slope would fell some trees and generate more
profits for private investors." The expansion was merely a
"modest and sensible step."
Uh, what about local control and the people of another little town,
Goshen, who maybe aren't so thrilled about the prospect that a
precipitous state agreement could change the character of their hamlet
forever?
Oh, never mind.
(Monitor columnist Katy Burns lives in Bow.)
------ End of article
By KATY BURNS
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