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bubbles will burst in these parts

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The primary election looms large in the window, also known as the general election in one-party Elbert County. Along with the wild flowers, commissioner candidate sales pitches are in full throated bloom.

Some of the selling centers on constitutional fundamentals, statesmanship, limited government – the conservative basket of principles. This language sounds so tautologically wonderful, airtight, and it really appeals to students of history and traditional idealists.

Other selling focusses more on modern management methods and the myth that the most desirable future is already known today, so plans must be written into law to force Elbert County citizens to comply with the Vision.

Still other selling advises we shuck all that highbrow theoretical buncombe and take a flyer on someone unconventional because, well, just because it might be better that way.

None of it will pan out, because none of it has ever panned out, and it’s all been done many times before. Politics is an art of make-believe practiced one step ahead of the voting rubes. Some parties practice politics one step ahead of the law too, but since politicians can change laws, this usually doesn’t present much of a problem.

History’s rule book tells us that laws, statutes, codifications, master plans, and judicial opinions, rarely get repealed or overturned, despite how poorly they anticipate future human behavior, or how much they end up costing. Politicians and judges rarely get impeached, despite poor decisions made. Ministerial immunity rarely gets penetrated, despite negligent and reckless actions. And statesmanship founded in principles enumerated in the Declaration of Independence rarely compels behavior in the face of exigent pragmatic considerations.

Candidate “puffing” – sales pitches – make bubbles that will burst. More puffing means bigger bubbles, but they all burst in time.

Those who voted for the plan will discover that the plan didn’t work. Those who voted for the principles will look long and hard to find any evidence of them in practice. Those who voted for change will discover the same old thing. Those who voted for the entitlements will discover that it wasn’t nearly enough to alleviate their needs. Those who voted for limiting government will discover that the corrupting influence of power proved too much for any man to resist.

The systemic problems we add to the complexity of life by propagating this pointless political overhead suck the life out of our society, to no good end. The only rational response to it all is to not further enable it.

Potemkin Village

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Please, commissioner candidates, don’t do us any favors. Don’t promise to make plans for us, be they masterful or otherwise. Your predecessors have made too much mess with plans for us already. Don’t promise to make Elbert County more effective so it can collect more taxes and haul in more revenue from the citizens. We citizens already think government hauls in too much from us. Don’t promise to get along with each other so that the commission can agree on doing more to the citizens of Elbert County. We don’t want you to do more. We want you to do less to us. Don’t promise us more government. We want less government – the exact opposite of what most of you were promising.

As true today as in 1849 when first penned, “That government is best which governs least…”, Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience.

After viewing the Youtube vids from the multi-party commissioner candidate forum the other night, with all of the promises, plans, accusations, and elucidations, you’re all courting power, evidently imagining yourselves qualified to dictate to other people indistinguishable from yourselves.

I can imagine who told you this is what Elbert County needs and wants – the usual pro-planning, pro-government, country-in-county, NIMBY, something-for-nothing, folks who publish our local fishwraps, who think grant money is the route to profitability, who work daily to keep Elbert County stuck in the last century.

Elbert County is beautiful. But it’s also a wasteland with no viable economy and no affordable means for people to make a contribution to the modern world. That’s the legacy I heard most of you promise to uphold the other night.

Surely Elbert County could do more for the modern world than be a bedroom community for public employees, retired and punching coupons, or still employed by a public agency of some sort. In most other parts of the world, people actually have to make a contribution to society to survive.

I’m waiting for one of you commissioner candidates to promise to not sustain the Potemkin Village of Elbert County.

back slapping public officials

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“Its pretensions to “comprehensitivity” destroyed, we can now see this “system” as a form of intellectual charlatanism, a studied fascination with process and minutiae that bespeaks the true soul of the born bureaucrat–the man who does nothing in particular, and to no societal good, but who by his own lights does it very well.”

The context of the above writing is not county politics, political appointments, school boards, citizen committees, or similar local governing bodies that folks–so eerily described above–zealously seek out and set aside for themselves each year in Elbert County.

How many times have you heard one of them hold forth on how hard they, or one in their cohort, works in the power role they’ve secured?

Do they expect us to believe that obsessive protection of their local offices somehow disproves the corrupting influence of power?

A most unsavory proposition

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Elbert County has a cadre of Leftists who militate for control of the county by saturating county government affairs. Their coordinated harassments of every decision by non-Leftist elected and appointed officials show up on the internet and local fishwraps with monotonous regularity.

They find every official decision unwise, unfounded, untransparent, unplanned, uneconomic, environmentally unsound, undemocratic, ill-advised, ill-conceived, ill-informed, poorly executed, an abuse of authority, a blatant insult to all good things, and an affront to the health, safety and welfare of the people.

The structure of the Leftist script – the adjectives, adverbs, and accusations – never changes. Only the subjects and objects change as each new decision circumstance generates another turn on the organ grinders’ crank where the monkey dances and the tune replays.

This Leftist cadre of retired schoolteachers and lawyers aligned with The United Front have been running Elbert County for as long as I can remember. Oh they chirp about old guard Republicans a fair amount, but the ECR GOP is no match for the seasoned bureaucratic class of community organizers saturating the Elbert County gestalt with the high crimes and misdemeanors they “uncover” each day.

Complex problems never have simple solutions, never can be solved by only one solution, and the best solution in the fullness of time often won’t be obvious until time passes. Enter politics – the art of sounding authoritative about imponderably complex circumstances.

Years ago, politicians gave lip service to statesmanship, a throwback to antiquity to identify themselves with nobility. Now it’s all pragmatism, politics and legalese. Times change, but the natures of human problems do not. We need statesmen more than politicians now more than ever.

But with rabid United Front local Leftists occupying all of the public administrative head space, who would want to spend their days in public service constantly opposed by pathologically offensive community organizers? There is no reason behind the “mythomania” of their opposition agenda. No sound argument will satisfy the Front. No non-Leftist reasoning can scale the ramparts of the cult mind.

On a playing field of imponderably complex problems, armed with the pseudo power to morph reality into constructs without regard to causation, the United Front politiks on.

Any conservative running for elected office in Elbert County would sign up for a term of pure hell where their every published thought and every exposed bit of personality, history, family and life will be dragged through the mud on a daily basis by the United Front of unelectable Leftists.

Reduce number of planning commissioners

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The Elbert County Planning Commission [ECPC] has been a tool for Leftists to dominate growth and development in Elbert County for too long. The fiascoes over oil & gas development, planned unit development, zoning subdivision, density bonus, water rights, special use districts, and the country-in-county feel of Elbert County, have all been public stages for the Left to impose un-voted-for control over citizens of Elbert County.

static.squarespace.com

The ECPC has hosted mouthy liberal majorities for as long as I can remember. But these folks never win an actual election in Elbert County. Every time one of them steps out on to an electoral stage, they lose big time. Voters obviously don’t want them dictating the future of the county.

Yet they haunt the county administration building like ghosts, unable to leave the place, moaning about until they get themselves appointed to another volunteer bureaucratic position – on the apparent qualification that they just won’t stay home.

Alexis de Tocqueville described [at least] one of the main problems 156 years ago as follows:

‘Long before the [French] Revolution, Ministers of State had made a point of keeping a watchful eye on everything that was happening in the country and of issuing orders from Paris on every conceivable subject. […like modern zoning…] As time went on and with the increasing efficiency of administrative technique, this habit of surveillance became almost an obsession with the central government. […like modern planning…] Towards the close of the eighteenth century it was impossible to arrange for poor-relief work in the humblest village of a province hundreds of miles from the capital without the Controller-General’s insisting on having his say about the exact sum to be expended, the site of the workhouse, and the way it was to be managed. When an almshouse was established, he insisted on being supplied with the names of the paupers using it, the dates of their arrival and departure. In 1733 M. d’Argenson observed that “the amount of office work imposed on our heads of departments is quite appalling. […like modern bureaucracy…] Everything passes through their hands, they alone decide what is to be done, and when their knowledge is not as wide as their authority, they have to leave things to subordinate members of their staffs, with the result that the latter have become the true rulers of the country.”‘

Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution, 1858. Stuart Gilbert translation, 1978, p. 61.

Think about it. Do we go through all of the time and expense to elect Board of County Commissioner [BOCC] members only to have unelected bureaucrats govern us? The question answers itself.

Electing BOCC members is the only means voters have to control Elbert County government. Additional layers of governors underneath the BOCC should be limited only to non-discretionary functions.

Reducing the number of unelected planning commissioners is, without question, a step in the right direction.

Look around at the absence of economic opportunity in Elbert County. The Left have done enough damage here.

the times they are a changin’

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Republican/Independent/Democrat — Distinctions without a difference

Kelly Dore – “I will work hard to make sure that growth preserves our county rural lifestyles…”
John Dorman – will “…work very hard to improve our land and protect our lifestyle…“

Scooter's Report

It appears the Elbert County BOCC majority will soon shift back to country-in-county – rurally impoverished – economics.

Commissioner Rowland and Commissioner Schlegel should do everything they can to swing the pendulum in Elbert County toward freedom and liberty.

Repeal zoning. Repeal the master plan. Repeal planning regulations. Repeal all regulations.

NOW! Before the lifestyle Nazi’s get control.

Green Light Elbert County’s Private Sector! Free Elbert County Citizens from the planning Leviathan.

“Most of the rules and regulations that affect the rights of ordinary Americans are not laws written by elected lawmakers but regulations imposed by unelected administrative agencies that wield broad authority to interpret their own commissions, write their own regulations, and enforce their own rules in hearings overseen by their own agents. These bureaus are not accountable to the voting public in any realistic sense; they are generally beyond the control even of an affected citizen’s elected representatives. Yet courts review their actions with a lenient, deferential attitude, under the doctrine of Chevron, U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, a precedent that gives agencies power to interpret their mandates as expansively as they want except in the most extreme cases. In short, the modem administrative state has outstripped the quaint model of conscientious legislators deliberating about the public good, which might have justified a court in leaving citizens to the political process for protection. The idea that the people can “vote the bums out” if they dislike government policy is simply unrealistic.”

“Americans are realizing the dangers of expanding the scope of government and are protesting the continued calls for bailouts, handouts, entitlement programs, and restrictions on freedom, privacy, property rights, and other aspects of liberty. The time has come for the legal community to pay heed. The time has come to reject the notion that people have the right to control each other’s lives and to take the fruits of their labor. The time has come to secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.”

Timothy Sandefur, The Conscience of the Constitution

apply precautionary principle to planners first

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The precautionary principle–an underlying justification often espoused by planners in Elbert County to excuse repressive zoning–has a number of systemic problems, according to Goklany.

Can the Precautionary Principle Manage Risks Effectively? by Indur M. Goklany

  • “[T]he precautionary principle .  .  .  based on concentrating on its environmental costs while downplaying its public health benefits, fuels suspicions that the principle can be used (or abused) to cherry pick which risks one may focus on during regulatory inquiry and regulation.”
  • “[C]ompanies. . .protect themselves from liability and lawsuits by seeking some level of governmental approval, bolstered by the desire to avoid unfavorable publicity. . . “
  • “[L]arger companies, in particular, actively court regulation since that would lead to higher barriers to entry into the market for smaller, possibly more innovative upstarts.”
  • “[L]egislative bodies, government agencies and their officers often seek to expand their power, and future employment possibilities, by filling regulatory vacuums.”
  • “[N]on-specialists rely on error-prone “mental shortcuts” such as assigning higher probabilities to types of hazards they can readily recall, .  .  .  an emotionally-driven tendency toward adopting the more alarming of competing narratives regarding a hazard (“alarmist bias” ). Moreover, today’s technology frequently detects chemicals to levels at which health impacts cannot be reliably replicated, .  .  . but since absence of future harm is unprovable, they resort to their mental shortcuts to interpret the significance of such low.  .  .levels.”
  • “[A]n examination of all relevant risks and options might itself lead to “paralysis by analysis.”
  • “[A]ny policy, regulation or action (or “policy”, for brevity) predicated on the [precautionary] principle should not increase overall environmental and public health risks. In fact, the principle should favor those policies that would reduce overall risks the most.”

All of the above systemic problems with the precautionary principle must be actively mitigated to prevent unsound public policy and unjustified regulation. But in Elbert County — ignoring public health benefits from development and improved standards of living, regulators advancing their careers, the use of regulations for anti-competitive outcomes, amateur citizen planners reacting to alarmist political positions — the only safeguard we have to inhibit planners from practicing some or all of the above corruptions is the Board of County Commissioners itself.

“I am most concerned about demonstrating how a wrongly conceived precautionary principle applied to the dangers arising from the use of coal or nuclear fuel–that is, without a consistent, detailed, and thorough cost-benefit analysis–leads to solutions that are utterly ineffective and will put a disproportionate burden on our future. In real life, there is always a trade-off–even for caution. That trade-off tends to be most expensive. To argue the contrary would be irresponsible populism.” Vaclav Klaus

BOCC should turn down proposed regs

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As currently written and approved by the Elbert County Planning Commission, the proposed zoning amendment for Part II, Section 27, Administrative Review and MOU Process for Minor Oil and Gas Operations and Related Facilities to Elbert County Zoning regulations will expose Elbert County to multiple lawsuits.

The proposed regs define the nature of a minor oil & gas operation in terms of equipment, operational characteristics, etc.  In addition to specifying the physical characteristics of a minor oil & gas operation, the regulations require that a “voluntary” Memorandum of Understanding be inked between Elbert County and a prospective operator.  Without a “voluntary” MOU, an operator’s physical equipment cannot constitute a minor operation.

Moreover, this fiction was invented to shelter the incorporation of local zoning operational conflicts with COGCC regulations into local law through the MOU.  Operational conflicts are more restrictive regulations that conflict with state regulations, unless an operator voluntarily agrees to them.  They cannot be required by local regulations.

Elbert County Planners are attempting to hide operational conflicts in plain sight by placing them inside a voluntary contract of an MOU.

Except the MOU isn’t voluntary.  It’s a document required by zoning  before equipment – with certain characteristics that don’t change whether or not the MOU exists – can meet the terms of a minor oil & gas facility in the proposed zoning section.

In this context, the MOU fits the definition of a contract of adhesion between parties of substantially unequal bargaining power.  A “voluntary” MOU in the context of a required regulatory framework will not survive a court challenge as an enforceable contract.

Elbert County Planners have every right to follow a policy to seek truly voluntary MOU agreements with oil & gas operators.  And an operator has every right to agree to more restrictive operational terms in an MOU with Elbert County.

But the construct currently proposed is not voluntary, it is regulatory.  As such, it fails as a contractual construct, and it fails as a local regulatory operational conflict with COGCC state regulations.

The BOCC would be wise to turn this proposed language down.  Passage will lead to litigation which can only delay the onset of oil & gas operations in Elbert County.

The Elbert County Planning Commission raised more rebuttable presumptions in their 1-2-14 recommendation to the BOCC, however, the above major problems should be sufficient to cause a re-tool of this zoning debacle.

time for Brown to be excused

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According to the BOCC, the Oil & Gas MOU on the table is the draft from 11-27-13.

Mr. Rick Brown of the Planning Commission expressed dissatisfaction with this MOU in the Prairie Times this week, and said that the BOCC is “rushing to judgment on an inadequately vetted MOU” and that Commissioners Rowland and Schlegal [sic] have “contempt for transparency and citizen involvement.”

I’d have to say it’s Mr. Brown showing contempt for Elbert County citizens – in particular the Elbert County citizens who have waited 3 years now while the Planning Commission played cat-and-mouse delaying games with the Oil & Gas industry.

The problems I see with the above MOU are as follows; [Read more…]

sticky zoning laws

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Writing them is a lot easier than cleaning them up.

Elbert County Republicans ceded direction of Elbert County zoning law to the Left years ago. Under the Left, master planning – what used to be a guideline for officials – became, effectively, regulatory.

Discretion by elected County Commissioners, who citizens used to go to for reasonable treatment in the face of overwhelming bureaucratic power, has been replaced by heavy-handed zoning laws written by Leftist planners. [Read more…]

A fair trade

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Will trade tax vote for zoning repeal.

If the BOCC repeals land use zoning regulations, I’ll vote for their tax increases.

If Elbert County wants to take more money from citizens, citizens should be free to earn money in Elbert County.

B_Imperial

RE: (land use zoning regulations)

Please click on the links below to download various Regulations & Plans:

LAND USE APPLICATIONS
(Please refer to the Section identified on each application in either the Subdivision or Zoning Regulations for more information.)

Please click on the links below to download various Applications:

Administrative Applications
(All administrative applicants shall meet or talk with Community and Development Services Office staff prior to application submittal to determine if application can be handled administratively.)

Non-Administrative Land Use Applications
(All applicants shall meet or talk with Community and Development Staff to find out about the required Pre-Application Meeting, its submittal requirements and scheduling prior to formal application submittal.)

Please contact the Community and Development Services Office if you have questions.

The Circus is back in town

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Anti oil & gas activists are still playing fast and loose with the facts, and now they’ve brought in more activists from other counties to muddy the waters and escalate the circus atmosphere of BOCC meetings. [Read more…]

Take my commissioner, please.

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The Elbert County Planning Commission rubber-stamped an oil & gas zoning regulation that would have put the county in conflict with state COGCC regulations, making grounds for litigation in the grey area of Colorado county vs. state authority to legally occupy a regulatory field. Had those regulations passed, it wouldn’t have taken long for an aggrieved party, no doubt with supporting briefs from Jerry Dahl, to come along and tie the county up in an expensive lawsuit with the state.

After listening to interminable hours of environmentalists on the oil and gas edit committee and their audiences haggle through various entrapment schemes to stymie oil and gas development, I believe that litigation was always their unspoken objective. They never intended to facilitate oil and gas development, regardless of how safe, how environmentally benign, how well planned it could be, or, and this one really chaps my butt, how much good faith they professed.

Before Larry Ross became Commissioner Ross, he and his wife were part of that clamor for oil and gas regulation. As the letter below demonstrates, the big picture from the elected office window has done little to objectify his views.

As head of the planning commission, Grant Thayer should have had the fortitude to stand against the liberal majority who proceeded without regard to the expressed COGCC warnings about operational conflicts. In doing the only honorable thing, however, he neglected to mention his own culpability, and instead dumped on the BOCC. Maybe he’ll man up on that issue someday.

If all this wasn’t bad enough, the planning commission can only be expected to issue findings even further removed from objective reality under the leadership of staunch leftists Crisan and Brown, champions of the envious, redistributors of all things appurtenant to land, holders of the door handles to Elbert County, closed tightly behind the last ones to successfully make it out here.

The movie Pleasantville comes to mind — the black and white part.

B_Imperial

RE: Thayer Resignation

Dear Editor [West Elbert County Sun, 7-18-2013],

It is with deep regret that I have accepted the letter of resignation of long time Elbert County Planning Commission Chairman Mr. Grant Thayer.

Mr. Thayer has faithfully served the people of Elbert County for over a decade accomplishing a great deal to provide a land use planning and zoning framework and leadership for our nine member Planning Commission. Grant has my most sincere gratitude.

Grant Thayer is a highly accomplished petroleum geologist. Mr.. Thayer has been the CEO of two oil companies and the COO of another. Grant is also a tremendous steward of the land having placed thousands of his acres into conservation and wildlife trusts and utilizing best practices in ranching and farming.

Mr. Grant Thayer brought all this ability and selfless dedication to the process of developing for Elbert County an oil and gas regulation that is practical and workable for our citizens, the state and the industry.

Mr. Thayer stated in his letter the following: “It appears that the motion by Commissioner Schlagel and its subsequent passing that it is the intent of the BOCC to bypass the Planning Commission in drafting and recommendations of future county regulations.”

Our citizens should be concerned and alarmed when the Board of County Commissioners ignores and bypasses our Planning Commission on zoning issues of any kind.

An effective Planning Commission can protect us from land use decisions being made by a mere two County Commissioners and placing special interests above yours.

Best Regards,

Larry D. Ross, Elbert County Commissioner, District 3

leadership vs. litigiousness

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Other polarities here:

  • Republican vs. Democrat
  • Rule of Law vs. Manipulation of Law
  • Conclusive Decisionmaking vs. Adversarial Provocation
  • Elected Representation vs. Aparatchik Subversion

The BOCC majority, in this case, prevented bad zoning laws from overtaking Elbert County.  Let’s hope they continue to do so.

Rick Brown (4/2/2013) “Frankly at this point I don’t care what the state says.”

overreachers

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C.R.S.  30-28-116. Regulations may be amended

From time to time the board of county commissioners may amend . . . any . . . provision . . . of the zoning . . . Any such amendment shall not be made or become effective unless the same has been proposed by or is first submitted for the approval, disapproval, or suggestions of the county planning commission. If disapproved by such commission . . . such amendment, to become effective, shall receive the favorable vote of not less than a majority of the entire membership of the board of county commissioners.

Over the past 2+ years, the Oil & Gas regulation edit committee, and its contributory audiences, were both heavily weighted with Democrats and environmentalists.

Last Spring, the Elbert County Planning Commission took the wholesale work product from this partisan group and passed it without objection.

In June, the BOCC offered to strike a middle ground with these forces by saving the zoning regulation component with minor language changes, and revamping the MOU into a more fair negotiation tool, one not repugnant to industry and COGCC regulations.

Democrat forces would have nothing to do with that compromise and spoke vehemently against it.

Democrat forces never intended to produce a workable process.  They intended to create, and did create, a document to legalize a zoning process of interminable discretionary procedural delays — pretty much the same approach they used for the new zoning for Special Districts.

Apparently, the BOCC learned something from the Special District zoning fiasco.

At yesterdays’ oil & gas regulatory denouement, Mr. Blotter threw up a Hail Mary with another call for a moratorium — essentially the legal effect he and compatriots had intended to achieve with the zoning process they’d constructed over the past 2+ years.

The majority of the BOCC correctly realized that another turn on the planning commission merry-go-around, with zero assurances that the unelected planning commissioners would produce any kind of workable outcome, would just end up extending the debacle.

The majority of the BOCC realized that a substantial change in governing law must be arguably better than the status quo, and that on the working documents presented to them, and likely to be presented to them from the same people in the future, they could not make that case.  Judging by the weak objections from Commissioner Ross, there indeed was no case to be made.   And the majority knew that Elbert County already had plenty of regulatory protection in place under the COGCC’s legal occupation of the field, and Elbert County’s land use zoning under special use review.

The ones who came away from yesterday licking their wounds are the over-reaching planners who have now marginalized themselves — and that includes CDS employees, lawyerly code writers, the rubber-stamping planning commission poobahs, and the acolyte zombie enablers of this circus — into a boring predictable bunch of partisan hacks.

B_Imperial

Thomas Jefferson

"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself."

Aristotle

"Only an armed people can be truly free. Only an unarmed people can ever be enslaved."

Karl Popper

“A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is nonscientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.”