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I don’t know about you, but it
seems to me that what’s transpired in the battle over our Comprehensive Plan
is not unlike the perilous healthcare debate that’s currently going on up in
Washington. Devoid of any leadership from
President Obama, various committees of the House of Representatives slogged
their way through reams of matters medical to finally reach a decision of
some sort and present a plan. All these plans were endlessly debated,
amended and finally packaged into one plan by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her
arm-twisting cohorts in the House. Their plan was then sent to the Senate,
where it was pronounced dead on arrival. In fact, most bills sent from
the House to the Senate are pronounced dead on arrival, so nothing to worry
about there. Problem is that the House has no filibuster rule, which means
that all you need to pass a bill is a simple majority, and that is so
undemocratic as to leave what the House produces with little more than
nuisance value. In the end, then, it’s all left
up to the more sedate, mannerly and democratic Senate to have its committees
slog through the same matters medical and come up with their own bills, and
who cares what the House did? What the Senate does best, of
course, is make utter hash of its attempts at legislation because it’s
democratic enough to realize that minority obstruction trumps majority rule.
What usually results, after interminable debate and scores of minority
filibusters, is a vote to do absolutely nothing and to move on to the next
ridiculous suggestion sent over by the House. In short, if you’re a fan of endless debate,
just toss a bill into the Senate’s Mixmaster and have a ball with C-Span. And
you wonder why nothing ever gets done?
All of which brings me to last
week’s discussions about the James City County Comp Plan. If you think of the Planning
Commission as the House of Representatives and the Board of Supervisors as
the Senate, you’ll have it about right.
The Planning Commission, after
plowing through more pages of statistics, subcommittee reports, citizen
committee reports, demography reports, zoning regulations and other
unintelligibly designed legal curveballs than would fill a novel by Dostoyevsky,
finally delivered itself of a product
and sent it to the supes for approval.
Like the Senate, however, the
supervisors had their own ideas about what should constitute a Comp Plan and
hence started the process all over again. Again like the Senate, they were
not about to rubber-stamp a plan sent over by ill informed document
daubers. I should note here that I think
the Planning Commission’s report is a flawed plan in many regards, and I
respect the wishes of Supervisors John McGlennon and Jim Icenhour to insert
language and propose amendments that would better preserve our rural lands.
That is, after all, what should be the ultimate goal of the Comp Plan. The
process by which all this occurred, however, is another matter entirely. The problem is that once you’re
thrown off the track by getting into discussions about the difference between
process, planning and policy you’re coming dangerously close to senatorial
buffoonery. When Bruce Goodman said, for
instance, that the Comp Plan was more of a planning document than a policy
document, what did he mean? Isn’t policy what defines planning? Shouldn’t the Planning
Commission and the supervisors have decided before the Comp Plan discussions
began what in fact the philosophical or jurisdictional effects of the plan
were to be and what process the supervisors would eventually follow to
perfect the plan? It’s as though these two bodies
were working so independently of each other that it is only now, when the
time of decision is upon them, that questions about the real meaning or
intent of the plan are arising. Hence the resultant page by page parsing of
sentences and suggested additions not covered in the plan. To say nothing of
an essay written to the Gazette by one planner suggesting that even some
commissioners think the plan has dangerous omissions. Perhaps Goodson was right, and
the plan should have been sent back to the commission with supervisor
comments. Or, prior to sending the plan
to the supervisors, the commission and the board should have convened a joint
meeting to discuss proposed supervisorial amendments, to say nothing of
defining the relationship between process, policy and planning. Unsenatorial though that might
be, it would make all the difference between a disjointed and divisive plan
and one that clarifies succinctly a jointly-agreed upon policy for future
development. |
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lewleadbeater.com Copyright 2002 All Rights Reserved email: LWL@lewleadbeater.com |
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