Perspective

Balancing the rights of individuals to act freely, with the public’s interest in preventing potentially harmful actions, has been an age-old struggle of government. Private development on private property, and the regulation of such development by public laws, is a highly visible arena for that struggle. Our society is built around private ownership of land and resources, yet there are some resources that we cannot help but share—the air we breathe, the water that flows across the surface of the land, and all the public rights-of-way that connect our private domains.

Few would argue with the importance of land-use zoning and building set-backs in maintaining a minimum quality of life in our communities. Other regulations are more controversial and will be the topic of ongoing debate as we all learn to cope with life on a more densely occupied planet.

Opponents of overbearing regulations (and anyone with common sense) can play an important role in ensuring that public protections do not unnecessarily restrain economic and other activities. Court cases like the one described on page 4 present an example of the ongoing arm-wrestling around these issues. The Supreme Court, while siding with the individual in this case, clearly affirmed the public’s right to general protections that are applied across the board.

In contrast to the Supreme Court, some members of Congress are seeking to pass laws that could effectively do away with

all restrictions that benefit the public, simply by making them too expensive to implement (also on page 4). By requiring the taxpayers to pay individuals and corporations for any loss of property value due to regulation, they are jeopardizing all land-use regulations, including those we all take for granted. If such measures should become law, the existing balance between individual rights and public protection would be lost. Furthermore, the quality of our environment, which is much harder to measure in dollars than the commercial value of land, would undoubtedly suffer.

– Nadav Malin