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Federal Zoning Bill Would Preempt Local Parking Mandates
- mattw2121 3y agoI don't know exactly how to feel about this. On one hand, I'm in complete agreement that property owners should get to decide how much (if any) parking they build. On the other hand, I don't like this is codified at the federal level.
- debacle 3y agoI am feeling this way a lot lately. There is a bill to mandate a minimum wage specifically for school teachers at the federal level. Teachers need higher pay, but a federal mandate isn't the solution.
- timthelion 3y agoAs far as I know, that's not actually a federal mandate though, it's a federal condition on the provision of funds. States can refuse the mandate and the money.
- Bran_son 3y agoI don't like such financial circumvention of constitutional limits on the federal government. Especially since those funds are extracted from the states in the first place. That said, this zoning bill seems constitutional, per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35875405 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35875405
- r00fus 3y ago> Especially since those funds are extracted from the states in the first place. Explain this. Feds aren't taking money from states, the federal income tax for example is in addition to state tax (if any). There is no federal sales tax.
- Bran_son 3y agoThe income that the feds tax is generated in the states. There is no meaningful distinction between a 15% federal and 15% state tax, and a 30% state tax that is then divided 50/50 between state and federal governments.
- r00fus 3y agoExcept that states aren't 100% competent enough to produce all the legal framework and military support that the USG provides. Some states are essentially military bases + federal contractors to the government itself - they provide nothing of local value. Any serious consideration of the sovereign state died in the civil war (Texas constiution included).
- Bran_son 3y ago> Except that states aren't 100% competent enough to produce all the legal framework and military support that the USG provides. So? That support is guaranteed to them by the constitution, and is the justification for federal taxes. Still taking the taxes, but discriminating how they distribute them based on constitutionally-protected state activity, is illegitimate and counter to the spirit (and I believe letter) of the constitution. It's like an employer withholding part of your wage because he doesn't like your conduct outside of work, despite your contract not placing any limits on that behavior. And when you complain, he replies with "well you couldn't earn this much money on your own". Or perhaps a better example is being denied Medicaid or police protection, because of some otherwise legal conduct.
- prottog 3y agoThat's just a federal mandate with extra steps, like how the feds got the states to impose a 21-year minimum drinking age even though they didn't have the Constitutional authority to do so. When the federal government gets two-thirds of all tax revenue and use it as a cudgel to circumvent its prescribed limits, it's a mandate. "States can refuse the mandate and the money" is possible only when state and federal tax receipts are at similar levels.
- ouid 3y agoTeachers are paid, in large part, by the federal government. What's your complaint?
- polski-g 3y agoThis is false. An incredibly small amount of teacher funding comes from the federal government: https://ed100.org/lessons/whopays https://ed100.org/lessons/whopays
- sidewndr46 3y agoEven if it were true, it'd be an accounting trick. Outside of Columbia, there is no where the Federal government can tax to generate the revenue to pay said teachers. So the tax revenue would either come from the states directly or indirectly via inflation.
- ghaff 3y agoIn the US, the majority of K-12 public education is funded by local property taxes with state taxes making up most of the balance.
- tptacek 3y agoThis should be done at the state level, not federally, but the logic for doing it at a relatively high level is that local governments have historically used parking minimums as a way to exclude new development; there are both collective action problems and conflicts of interest at the local level that don't exist at the state (or federal) level.
- Drunk_Engineer 3y agoThis point is addressed in the article: "An originalist understanding of the Constitution would consider parking mandates a taking of property in violation of the Fifth Amendment's Takings Clause protections, incorporated against state and local governments by the 14th Amendment. Congress would therefore be empowered to pass legislation to protect individuals' rights from these parking mandates."
- kelseyfrog 3y agoI wonder what a textualist understanding of the constitution would produce and why the author chose to highlight one over the other. It seems internally inconsistent to apply originalism to parking at all in the sense that there is no original thought on cars at the time of the drafting of the constitution simply because cars had not been invented yet.
- enragedcacti 3y agoTextualism as practiced is already calvinball and there is little point in trying to identify rational legal arguments that may persuade the court. It is much more explanatory to just look at the biases of the justices and assume they will reverse-engineer a textualist interpretation that supports their position. See Bruen where a lack of laws regulating guns indicates public carry is a right rooted in historical tradition vs. Dobbs where a lack of laws regulating abortion before quickening does not. [1] The conservative legal movement has turned constitutional interpretation into a shell game where choice of framing and selective use of historical examples can yield whatever result the justices already want. All of that said, the argument is that parking minimums constitute a restriction on your property rights for public use without compensation and a similar argument could be made with things that did exist at the time such as carriages. Again see Bruen where Thomas "refutes" a weapon ban by arguing handguns are more analogous to daggers than to lances. [1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4187143 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4187143
- gamegoblin 3y agoThe game theory of zoning dictates that it needs to be done at a higher-than-local level. Local control of zoning leads to weird incentives where multiple bordering municipalities in the same metro area both want the other ones to upzone, bring in more people and business (lifting up the whole metro area) while they themselves stay downzoned. The result of this game of chicken is that nobody upzones. CA and WA have had some recent wins with state-level zoning reform. It's unclear to me that it's needed at the Federal level -- state level seems like it should be enough in almost all cases.
- LeanderK 3y ago> The game theory of zoning dictates that it needs to be done at a higher-than-local level. This is also true in other countries. When a city grows everybody agrees that we need to expand the city and build new city districts. But it's always the other neighbouring municipalities who is better suited.
- frumper 3y agoI'm not sure why SF and LA should get to dictate how much parking is or isn't required in Copperopolis or Barstow. Parking spaces is not an issue in almost the entire United States. Dense places already have the tools to correct this problem themselves, and if they don't want to do it, then why would anyone force this on less populated locations.
- gamegoblin 3y agoThis law will have no effect on rural places where parking is abundant. Yes, it prevents places like Copperopolis from passing laws that require more parking, but individual businesses will still build abundant parking because their customers want it and land is cheap. Dense places do not have the tools to correct the problem themselves due to the coordination problems mentioned in the parent comment. It's a pure game theory situation where nobody wants to act first. One could imagine a more targeted law that only applied to municipalities within X distance of a Y population density municipality, so you try to sharp-shoot the satellite suburbs that want the benefits of big-city density without the costs. But such targeted laws are also pretty hard to get right.
- thegrim33 3y agoThe way the country was set up, the laws that affect you are supposed to be made at as local of a level as possible, and the federal government exists solely to pass laws that affect the entire country, about matters that the states can't handle themselves the way they want, and it's supposed to still be kept as minimal/small as possible. We're not supposed to have a huge federal government that decrees laws for the entire country like some sort of King. Every city, county, state, has the opportunity to set things up how they best see fit. Something like this is completely antithetical to the way the country is supposed to run.
- tptacek 3y agoThat is in fact not how the country was set up. State sovereignty was, of course, but the Federalist Papers are wary of local government.
- mholm 3y agoOn one hand, I entirely agree with you. The federal government was not made to perform these sorts of actions. But on the other hand, it's the only mediating organization outside the bucket of crabs that is our real estate market. Localities should have the power to manage their own regions. But when those localities are fighting between (0,0,0,0,...) and (2,0,0,0,...), it makes sense to push them all to a (1,1,...)
- jcranmer 3y ago> The way the country was set up, the laws that affect you are supposed to be made at as local of a level as possible That's not really true. The various states are (and always have been) unitary states from a political governance perspective. As expressed in modern jurisprudence, the majority of states are Dillon Rule states: states where local governments are purely creatures of the state government, and whose powers (or even existence) can be expanded or abrogated at the sole pleasure of the state. > and the federal government exists solely to pass laws that affect the entire country, about matters that the states can't handle themselves the way they want, and it's supposed to still be kept as minimal/small as possible. This is somewhat more true, but it's still a pretty poor reflection. Recall that the US Constitution was not the first form of government the US had: it was a response to the issues with the Articles of Confederation, which had the "federal" government as much, much weaker. It's not even fair to call the US a federal government at that point; the notion of a federal state--two levels of government, each with their own, independent locus of power not derived from the pleasure of the other--was more or less created from scratch for the Constitution. The Constitution does limit the powers of the federal government to, broadly speaking, two areas, with a third later being developed via amendments. These are international affairs (both in treaty making and military developments) and commercial regulation, with enforcement of civil rights later coming into play. Now, it's the case that things like the EPA or FDA aren't mentioned by the Constitution, but that kind of regulatory authority just didn't exist when it was written, and the existing grants of commercial regulation strongly suggest that it is intended for the federal government to have that regulatory authority to provide a single, integrated market among the several states of the union.
- Kerrick 3y agoMuch like the bill of rights, I'm okay with freedoms being enacted at _whatever_ level of government is needed.
- mattw2121 3y agoThis is a good distinction. Thank you!
- haroldp 3y agoThink of it as the federal government codifying a basic property right, in the same way the first amendment codifies basic speech rights, and it makes more sense.
- vsviridov 3y agoIf you look at the cities built in the Soviet times, where there were no parking space mandates, you'll see what will happen. People still buy cars, and those cars are just parked everywhere on the street, in the building courtyards, etc. Only on the last couple of decades (if that) underground parking became norm for high rise residential and commercial buildings in big cities. So unless you somehow plan on dissuading people from car ownership, I feel this will turn ugly... Especially in such a car-centric society like the US.
- tptacek 3y agoThis is pretty silly. You can almost always drive quickly from any place in the US with strict parking minimums to a denser urban area that either doesn't have minimums or has so many more people that the minimum doesn't matter --- ie, that the area is at its logistical carrying capacity for cars. Those dense urban areas aren't hellscapes; in fact, they're usually more walkable than the suburbs with the minimums.
- biddit 3y agoI frequent Turkey, which doesn't have parking enforcement in broad swaths of the country. People park basically anywhere a car will fit, including the sidewalks. It's a much more efficient use of space and it's a lot easier to find parking than the USA. And the thing is, things still functions quite well. I'd argue that draconian parking restrictions are as much as a problem as lack of parking lots.
- kachurovskiy 3y agoCars in Turkey cost a multiple of what they do in US and people earn much less. 10k vs 25k for a 2012 Corolla. Also if my info is correct currently people are signing up in dealerships to buy a car next year?
- CalRobert 3y agoHow is it in a wheelchair or pushing a pram?
- wing-_-nuts 3y ago
- charonn0 3y agoThis seems like it would violate the 10th amendment.
- throwawa14223 3y agoYeah, this is pretty obvious federal overreach.
- HDThoreaun 3y agoCommerce clause means the 10th amendment might as well not exist.
- charonn0 3y agoNo it doesn't.
- CalRobert 3y ago"buildings that are within half a mile of a major transit stop." Relevant to people commenting without reading. The idea here is to nudge cities away from car-dependence, and parking minimums are one of the worst culprits for embedding car dependence. "A similar story has played out in Buffalo, New York, and in Seattle, Washington. Most new homes being built in both cities would have been illegal under their old, pre-reform rules." One good way to increase housing supply is to make it not-illegal to build homes. This is great! If you want to learn more about how parking minimums affect cities and towns, and the people living in them (or not living in them since it relates to housing), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking is a great read.
- wing-_-nuts 3y agoI live in a condo complex, and visitor parking completely inadequate. If you don't have two parking spots, you're basically not having visitors. If we're going to start doing zoning codes on the federal level how about outlawing single family zoning? There's absolutely no reason one shouldn't be able to build up to a quad on any piece of land.
- _fat_santa 3y agoSo no single family homes, everyone just lives in condos? No thanks.
- wing-_-nuts 3y agoNo, you just can't say 'only single family homes can be built here'
- pessimizer 3y agoEverything should be decided locally, unless that inconveniences migrant worker gentrifiers and the people who want to get rich off of them in any way. Then we need a federal mandate. Virtually an anti-Civil Rights Act. Legislation to federally protect blockbusting.
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- calgarymicro 3y agoRepublicans control the House, and this bill is being introduced by a Democrat and doesn't appear to have any Republican cosponsors (or Democratic ones, for that matter). Needless to say, this will go nowhere.
- Tiktaalik 3y agoInteresting discussion around how abouts this sort of move might be legal. Similarly in Canada the federal government is often begged to get involved, but it's highly theoretical about just how much they can intervene, Someone has to step in as the adult in the room and do what would be the right policy for the society level, even if it's unpopular or more accurately unviable and politically challenging to implement at an extremely local level. A state or Federal government is exactly the agent who should be doing that.
- susanasj 3y agoone underdiscussed aspect of America's car oriented transportation system is that car accidents are a major reason that American life expectancy lags behind other developed countries[0] (along with gun violence). I have family that drive on highways in Texas daily and it's probably the most dangerous thing they do, but they have no choice. The cities are built to force you into owning a car and risking your life to accomplish basic tasks. [0] https://www.ft.com/content/653bbb26-8a22-4db3-b43d-c34a0b774303 https://www.ft.com/content/653bbb26-8a22-4db3-b43d-c34a0b774...
- porkbeer 3y agoAnd that is because we are a larger more disperzed nation, not some evil laws or 1950s boomer car culture.
- snapplebobapple 3y agoThis is probably good but it seems very low on the actual problem list. What really needs to be first priority in most of the places with this problem is bringing the building/development permit process towards a system that is both highly predictable before one starts, is highly likely to end in approval, and take an amount of time measured in a few weeks for building/development permit and not more than a couple months if rezoning is required.