| Conway
Daily Sun
4/7/2005
House passes repeal of racetrack law
If Senate concurs, new law could restore some local control of
Tamworth track
Nate Giarnese
CONCORDThe N.H. House Wednesday resoundingly passed an
amended version of HB 90, drafted by Carroll County representatives to
repeal the racetrack law that stripped away local control over the
course planned for Tamworth's Mount Whittier.
The amended HB 90 now headed for the Senate after a 273-76 House
vote could bring the Club Motorsports Inc. road course back under
regulation of Tamworth laws, sponsors say.
Should tracks like the 251-acre CMI facility fail to operate strictly
as a "practice driving instruction and exhibition facility" as
defined by the controversial year-old racetrack law, HB 90 would allow
them to be governed by town ordinances, House sponsors said.
"In effect we're saying we're leaving the new definition
in," HB 90 sponsor, State Rep. Harry Merrow, R-Ossipee, told
lawmakers in a third day of legislative session Wednesday. "If
you're not a racetrack, you've got nothing to worry about," Merrow
said. "Turn it into a racetrack, and local towns and local
selectmen have control of it."
The amended repeal strikes out only one clause from last year's law,
RSA 287-G, which could give Tamworth some control even if CMI runs a
practice-only facility. The clause exempts the newly-defined private
tracks from certain local laws, including a Tamworth sound ordinance,
passed this year at town meeting, to target only "practice driving
instruction and exhibition facilities."
"I believe, and so does the town attorney, that the most
recently passed ordinance is not enforceable... because of RSA
287-G," Merrow said, referring to the sound ordinance. HB 90 would
allow towns to pass laws, like the sound ordinance, regulating
"practice driving instruction and exhibition facilities."
The repeal, Merrow and other local representative say, is primarily
aimed at protecting local control in all towns in New Hampshire. State
Rep. Crow Dickinson, R-Conway, said last week that nothing can stop CMI
from breaking ground on its $28 million project in Tamworth, which has
no zoning regulations. "Nothing can help those people," he
said last Wednesday.
In the wake of RSA 287-G, Dickinson said Wednesday, even towns with
zoning ordinances (those not specifically addressing racetracks) would
not be able to regulate a similar facility. "I received a call from
Conway's board of selectmen," Dickinson said. "They said we
are vulnerable."
"Any other town in this state that has zoning that does not
include a racetrack, is open to same restriction of local
oversight," Dickinson said. "The noise ordinance... will be
void," he said. "This present law would void it as it
is."
Wednesday's vote came after legislators first overturned a strong
House committee report to kill the repeal.
Echoing testimony last week by House Municipal Government Committee
Chair, State Rep. Betsey Patten, R-Moultonborough, whose committee voted
14-5 to kill HB 90, State Rep. Jack Dowd, R-Derry, Wednesday called the
repeal effort the work of a minority, anti-development group.
"This is what happens when a focus group with a lot of money
decides they know better than their town," Dowd said Wednesday,
adding that Tamworth selectmen and a silent majority in Tamworth support
both RSA 287-G, and the track, and its promised jobs and tax revenues.
"This has nothing to do with local control," Dowd said.
State Rep. Peter Schmidt, D-Dover, who wrote the committee minority
report in favor of HB 90, however, called the outpouring of support for
the repeal, and public outrage against a "slippery" passage of
SB 458, "overwhelming."
Schmidt downplayed a so-called "silent majority," telling
House members it was not only silent, but invisible at two House public
hearings one in a packed gymnasium in Tamworth, and a second in
Legislators Hall in Concord. "Like a child's monster under the bed,
every time you look for the silent majority that supported the
track," Schmidt said, "you can't find any real evidence of
it."
"This is not an up or down vote on the track in Tamworth,"
he said. "This is not an up or down vote on economic development in
the North Country. This is about local control."
Local legislators have said right along they are not against
development or the Club Motorsports track, rather they have faulted a
"deceptive" legislative process, that let developers make an
end-run to the legislature, skirting town laws. "Local
control," Merrow said Wednesday. "I've heard it time and time
again in this legislature. What happened?" he asked. "Would
you want your town to lose local control?"
Merrow, Dickinson and others spoke cynically Wednesday of CMI's
promises to operate a strictly practice, non-racing facility, with
Dickinson invoking a common cliche from recent public hearing
testimonials, "if it walks like a duck... then it is a duck,"
he said.
Merrow said CMI websites and signage, advertising "speed,"
and "asphalt racing," and some ads billing 365-day-a-year
operations, inviting snowmobiles in the winter, warn that a racetrack in
effect is coming to Tamworth. "I wonder what this would have been
like if this was a racetrack," Merrow joked, drawing muted laughter
from legislators Wednesday.
Senate sponsors of SB 458 have said, without overwhelming local
support, a straight repeal of the racetrack law could meet a cold
reception in the Senate.
Dickinson said last week, that the Senate will almost certainly pass
the amended version. "I think they will go along with it," he
said. "I can't see them doing anything otherwise."
The Senate is expected to vote on HB 90 by June 9. |