Rossputin.com: Rational Thinking About Our World

They say that two things you never want to see made are laws and sausages, and I learned why last night.

In a Boulder County hearing room, in a two-and-a-half-hour scene that bounced between inanity, brief flashes of political insight, interesting public comment, and some of the worst committee management I've ever seen, somehow a fairly reasonable outcome was achieved.

The issue, as I discussed in yesterday's posting, was a rule proposed by the Land Use director regulating "Home Events", including concerts given at peoples' homes or on their property.

The first hour was interesting, and to some even inspiring.

After the Land Use director, Graham Billingsley, described the intent and details of the proposed "text amendment" to "the code", the panel took public comment.

I was second to speak, following a lady who has a neighbor who puts on large, loud, apparently for-profit concerts right next to their property. It was a real issue and a real problem, but one which seemed to me more an issue of enforcement of existing law (i.e. noise ordinance) than of needing a new law.

I spoke about property rights, about how regulations should default toward supporting the property owner, how the rule was excessively restrictive despite Mr. Billingsley's claim that it was permissive, and that it would simply give ammunition to the same sorts of busy-bodies who caused the trouble in my neighborhood to begin with, complaining about an event that did not disturb any sane people.

Others followed, including a woman who said she "felt her American spirit refill hearing people talk about our 'free country' and property rights." She ended her comments with "Think what it feels like to be free."

Commenters mentioned the likely constitutional challenges on 1st and 14th Amendment grounds which Boulder would probably face...and lose...when the proposed rule gets challenged. One interesting point was this: "If a wealthy person can do it with impunity, why penalize a group of less wealthy people who pool their resources to do the same thing?"

And someone who has lived in the mountains for a long time noted a century-or-more long history of entertainers coming up into the mountains to entertain the people who lived there.

Following the public comment, the panel went to work. Watching it was an incredible combination of fascinating and aggravating, with the committee chairwoman asking pointless questions, being excessively strict on "rules", losing track of where in the voting process they were, etc. The panel members at first seemed like they were going to simply table the proposed rules and ask Mr. Billingsley to redraft rules to deal with "real impacts". But as the process went forward, one committee member seemed to sway less experienced members toward accepting the rules with minor changes.

The key parts of the proposed rule included limiting "Home Events" to 1) no more than 60 people, 2) indoors, and 3) six times a year. There were other silly things, such as a prohibition against storing items for an event outdoors for more than 24 hours before the event.

But a couple of panel members stuck to their guns, and as someone interested in politics, this part was fun to watch: When a member made a motion to support the rule with very minor changes, such as increasing the number from 60 to 65 people, two other members started amending the motion, including removing the first two restrictions mentioned above and raising the frequency to twelve times per year.

A woman who seemed to be the least experienced member of the panel tried to add an amendment to prohibit amplification at any outdoor home event...a suggestion I admit might have come from an answer I gave her earlier in the evening, but that motion failed.

In the end, the rule was moved with no limits on the number of people, no restriction to inside the homes, and up to 12 times per year...forcing the panel member who originally moved to pass the rule to vote against it, but being passed by a 6-2 vote.

Given that we were probably not going to get out of this nanny state situation without regulation, this is as good as could have been hoped for.

It was interesting to me that the member who basically mastered forcing the motion-maker into voting no told me that he supported the much-less-restrictive regulation because he supported "community" and "not because (he) cared about the property rights arguments". I suppose I shouldn't complain, given the relatively favorable outcome.

But still, it disturbs me greatly how people in positions of regulatory authority can with such regularity make decisions based on their whim of the day rather than with any fundamental basis in property rights, the constitution, or even common sense.

I can't generalize about the panel members. Sensible and senseless came from men and women, from older and younger, from more experienced and less experienced. The one thing that they had in common was an apparent utter insensitivity to first principles as they get so caught up in their own authority.

It also bears noting that we would never have gotten to this ultimate nanny state scene without the truly silly initial "interpretation" by Mr. Billingsley that voluntary contributions to help offset the cost of hiring musicians for a house party constituted "commercial activity". As if that weren't silly enough, Billinglsey tried to justify his interpretation by arguing at the hearing that even if it were not a commercial activity or a for-profit activity for the property owner, it was a profit-seeking activity for the musician and therefore not allowed. If I have ever seen an example of someone being in government for too long, it's Graham Billingsley. After the event, I asked him if he had a hard time coming to that conclusion (suggesting that I hoped he did since he was so wrong), but he said it was actually easy for him. Someone who could rule that way easily needs to get a new job.

In any case, Mr. Billingsley and the forces of nannyism lost one to the reluctant enforcers of common sense, property rights, and our constitutional protections of freedom to assemble and equal protection.