Lane County Commissioners voted 3-2 to enter an agreement between Lane County, Eugene, Springfield, and the Lane Council of Governments to accept $1.45M in grant funding for the proposed Lane Livability Consortium. According to a staff report sent to the commissioners, the agreement establishes management authority to the general purpose governments, creates an accountability framework, and improves the budgetary and work product outcomes for Lane County. In English, it is an agreement to ensure more bureaucratic red tape at every level of the lives of local residents and businesses. It may not contain any new regulations as is, but it is a framework for future regulatory capacity. Reading through the agreement was similar to reading the email from the guy in Nigeria who has your inheritance, all he needs is your bank account number.
On one hand, the agreement calls for planning obvious local government functions that no local government should need a special project to clue them in on, such as “planning for public health emergencies,” did Lane County not do this before? And can we get the funding back from the programs that already provide this function? On the other hand, the project delves into utopiaville claiming that somehow good planning by local government is going to ensure economic prosperity. (Pause for LAUGHTER) In the age of progressive control and burdensome regulation stemming from agreements like this one, the only “planning” that Lane County should be doing is figuring out how they can get out of the way and let the free market create jobs and prosperity; like it did prior to the progressive anti-capitalist movement. Instead of creating agreements to find more things to regulate, maybe Lane County should be looking through its current obstacles to economic progress and eliminate them.
Lane County resident Bob Sowdon was at the meeting which authorized the county to go ahead with its central planning ambitions. In his testimony to the commissioners he voiced concerns about how similar this all sounded to the UN’s Agenda 21, which envisions a planetary regime that is built upon regional planning such as the “Smart Communities Project.” But his concern and that of many other local residents fell on deaf ears. One email from a local resident read in part:
“The document is chock full of policies & mandates that will leave you and our future county commissioners bound & committed to this agreement. Please examine this "Livability Lane" Draft Proposed Changes to Work Plan very carefully. When doing so please ask yourself if this is truly needed and if it will harm or hinder the livability and our local economy. What are the benefits vs. potential harm & cost?”
It’s too bad three of the commissioners didn’t ask themselves that question.
Three of the Lane County Commissioners are late getting the memo; anthropogenic climate change is a massive fraud. No amount of human effort will change the natural occurrence of solar cycles, so they should maybe consider NOT bankrupting citizens of Oregon, and the rest of the country, with these ridiculous climate centric programs that will effectively do nothing about the future climate, but will have definite and sustained impacts on the ability of Oregon citizens to participate in the free market on a globally competitive scale. Another memo they might want to go back and take a look at is the one about over regulation NOT helping to spur economic growth.
What government in general, and local government in particular, need to realize is that no level of their planning, no amount of grants, no amount of bureaucratic wisdom will replace what they take away. It didn’t work for the Soviets, it’s not working for the North Koreans, and it certainly won’t work in Oregon. If central planning is your thing, how about planning to get out of the way of the people and let them replenish the trough that you have emptied with your short sighted, naïve, and gullible governing. These progressive green groups that change names and tactics weekly play local governments like pianos. It is time to put our local officials and their special interest “green” groups on notice; we are not moving another inch, we are organizing, we are mobilizing, and we will be voting.
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