Tamworth Track Raises Questions of Local Control

Rebecca Kaufman, 2005-03-28 
NHPR

Late last week, The House Municipal and County Government Committee rejected a bill that really doesn't have much effect on most New Hampshire Communities. The bill was an attempt to repeal legislation that slipped through barely noticed last year. That law exempts certain kinds of automobile tracks from local regulation. But despite testimony from local residents overwhelmingly against the law, the House committee sided against them. And as New Hampshire Public Radio’s Rebecca Kaufman reports, both sides argue they were acting with local interests in mind.

Below is a rough transcript. It is not word for word accurate.

State Representative Harry Gale sits on the municipal and county government committee.

He said last weeks debate over house bill 90 was pretty straightforward.

One side wants the track, the other doesn't.

Well I think if you track the chronology of house bill 90 it’s pretty clear it has nothing to do at all with local control, it has to do with two sides and one side being dissatisfied with the outcome of a certain issue

For Charles Greenhalgh of the organization Focus: Tamworth, this is not about being on the losing end of the dispute.

Focus Tamworth is opposed to the track.

The legislature, the governor, any candidate running for those positions often promote local control as one of the pillars of New Hampshire law and this certainly eviscerates that pillar

This debate stretches back more than a year.

Club Motorsports International or CMI, proposed building a private track in Tamworth for people to exercise their BMWs and Jaquars.

Some residents liked the idea and looked forward to the jobs and business the track would bring.

Others worried the noise and pollution would harm the local environment.

Last year, CMI worked with some state lawmakers to introduce legislation that quietly became law.

It makes a distinction between racetracks and the type of track CMI wants to build.

Under the law, tracks like CMI’s are excluded from the local regulation other racetracks have to meet.

House bill 90 attempts to repeal that law.

And the prevailing public sentiment was in favor of the repeal.

But despite the testimony, in Concord and during hearings in Tamworth, the municipal and county government committee overwhelmingly rejected the bill, 14 to 5.

Opponents said it was not the job of state lawmakers to insert themselves into what they consider a local dispute

Committee member John Dowd voted against the bill..

He says Tamworth could have stopped the track on its own through zoning.

But Tamworth has chosen not to.

The town of tamworth has voted five times now not to do any zoning, that’s personal, I mean they voted put it on the ballot, and voted not to do zoning, you can’t say they don’t have local control, we heard that over and over, it takes away local control, it doesn’t, it doesn’t at all

Representative Peter Schmidt supported the repeal.

He says it’s too late for lawmakers to use the argument that they shouldn’t get involved in town matters.

The legislature should not involve itself in local issues but that’s exactly what they did last year when they passed senate bill 458

That was the bill that exempted facitilities like Club Motorsports from local regulation.

Schmidt says his fellow committee members have chosen to ignore the wishes of Tamworth residents.

Since they didn’t hear the testimony in tamworth and many didn’t, or at least some, hear the testimony in concord, what are they making their minds up based on, what the lobbyists tell them, and I think that’s a poor basis to make a decision, to hear only from the lobbyists

But Club Motorsports spokesman Scott Tranchmontagne says the more vocal residents in town, those who attended the hearings, do not represent the majority.

And he says most house committee members understood this.

They looked very heavily at the two selectmen from tamworth that came to the committee hearing and said we didn’t ask for house bill 90 we don’t need you to pass house bill 90 we still have local control over this project

Tranchmontagne points to a noise ordinance Tamworth residents recently approved as evidence that the town is not stripped of all authority over the track.

But Judy Silva of the New Hampshire Municipal Association says Tranchmontagne misses the point.

Silva argues that this bill has implications that go well beyond the Tamworth debate.

What is the impact on other towns and cities is the precedent it sets in coming to the legislature when there is some sort of a local dispute and getting the authority of the town to act in that dispute changed so that by virtue of the legislative change the municipality loses their authority to act and whoever is challenging the municipality wins

The bill now heads to the full house for a vote, where a floor fight is predicted.

But for Representative Nancy Johnson, the committee hearing alone was heated enough.

I have learned that you close up your notebook and you say to the chair I have to leave now and you go cry in you car, then you go home and have a shot

Representative, Peter Schmidt, was even more disappointed.

He says he will resign from the municipal and county government committee because of the way it handled the debate.

For NHPR news, I’m RK.