A Blog Posting by Ben Price of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, from January 15, 2017.
Just who are the legislators protecting when they enact legislation that forbids local law making – law making that limits or bans corporate activities like fracking, GMOs, factory farms, retail proliferation of plastic bags or sewage sludge dumping?
Just who do the legislators represent when they preempt local laws – laws that set a higher minimum wage, establish sanctuary for immigrants, protect LGBTQ residents from discrimination, or secure workers’ rights on the job?
State law-makers rationalize that these and many other issues are matters of state-wide concern. They claim these issues cannot be managed, regulated or governed by local jurisdictions.
Most of us, whether progressive or conservative, have difficulty challenging this claim. Sedimentary layers of case law have settled atop the inalienable right of local self-government, fossilizing it and preserving it as a quaint but extinct species of civil rights.
But “the state” (which is composed of powerful lobbyists working through bought politicians) acts presumptuously. It declares, in the name of residents across the state, that if a community decides to prohibit natural gas pipelines, set a higher minimum wage than the state, ban plastic bags, or allow transgender citizens to use public restrooms according to how they identify themselves, these things matter more to the people of the state as a whole than they do to the community that chooses to exercise self-governing authority locally. …
To read the entire Blog, click HERE.