The National League of Cities put together an analysis of home rule and put out a 79-page report. Introduction In our trilevel federal system, local governments perform a wide array of crucial governance roles. They are frontline providers of some of the most important services the public relies on every day and increasingly confront the [...]
Here is a new speech by Community Rights US' founding director, Paul Cienfuegos, presented to the Oregon Unitarian Universalist Voices for Justice Annual Meeting in Portland, Oregon on September 19, 2020. You can read it below, or listen to it HERE. Thoughts About Breathing and Not Breathing During This Time of Escalating Emergencies Facing [...]
Z Magazine published this OpEd on August 20, 2020. Read it on ZNet. Community Rights US submitted the following OpEd to The Oregonian - Portland, Oregon's daily corporate newspaper - on August 16, 2020. Titled "A National Emergency Requires a Bold Local Response". Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, their Opinion Editor rejected our submission with this [...]
In news that seems like satire, but isn't, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp wants to prevent Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and other local leaders from requiring masks to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus. Recent research shows that actual infections are 6-10 times higher than official counts in the United States. Additionally, one study [...]
Posted June 22, 2020 in ExpertForum, a blog published by the American Constitution Society. By Nestor M. Davidson (Albert A. Walsh Chair in Real Estate, Land Use, and Property Law; Faculty Director, Urban Law Center, Fordham University School of Law), and Kim Haddow (Director, Local Solutions Support Center) Over the past decade, the misuse of [...]
We in the Community Rights movement are challenging legal doctrines that stand in the way of economic and environmental sustainability. Those legal doctrines make sustainability literally illegal in the United States. One of the legal doctrines that we are challenging is State Preemption. The doctrine that says states have governing authority over local governments (municipal, [...]
Local governments wish state officials would do more to combat coronavirus. In a few states, they’re angry that governors have issued orders that preempt cities and counties from setting their own course. Published April 3, 2020 in Governing by Alan Greenblatt Like other mayors around the country, Kate Gallego is trying to keep her residents [...]
So the Attorney General of the United States is now claiming that stay-at-home orders from governors "may go too far and interfere with interstate commerce”. In which case, presumably, the AG would claim he has the authority to overrule the governors and lift their quarantines. Is that overreach? Yep! But hey, "the economy" is suffering! [...]
This article by Jon Hurdle appeared on State Impact Pennsylvania's website on March 27, 2020. Advocates for increased local control over Pennsylvania’s oil and gas industry welcomed a decision by environmental regulators to revoke their own permit for an injection well to be built in a rural township, on the grounds that the well would [...]
State preemption is one of the legal doctrines that Community Rights lawmaking challenges. Time after time citizen majorities have formed in communities to enact and enforce laws that make life easier for the many instead of the few. And more often than not state and federal levels of government step in to deny citizens their [...]
