The Washington Post has done it again. More conservative talking points are recited without even the most basic reporting to see if, in fact, they have any basis in reality. A controversy is stirred up where none really exists.
This time, the story is about National Heritage Areas. Reporter Paul Kane in his piece entitled "Heritage Areas vs. Property Rights," blithely quotes right-wing property rights groups without bothering to determine if the points they were making are true. I know this will come as a shock, but they aren’t. Not even close.
According to the article,
National Heritage Areas "pose a threat to private property rights through the exercise of restrictive zoning that may severely limit the extent to which property owners can develop or use their property," wrote Cheryl Chumley and Ronald D. Utt of the Heritage Foundation in a recent report on heritage areas. Chumley and Utt said such "regulatory takings" through zoning are the "most common form of property rights abuse today."
Republicans in Congress and property activists say that individuals who own land in these heritage areas now have to answer to a quasi-governmental body about how they develop their property.
Not a word of this is true. Designation as a National Heritage Area restricts no property owner’s rights. The management entity that serves the area has no authority at all to interfere in any local zoning or property rights decision. No one has to "answer to a quasi-governmental body about how to develop their property." Period.
The reporter could have easily discovered this in about two minutes by examining, for example, the legislation designating the Journey Through Hallowed Ground Heritage Area. [Full disclosure: I am on the Journey Through Hallowed Ground Partnership Board, but this entry is solely my own.]
This is what the bill that recently passed the House says:
SEC. 10. PRIVATE PROPERTY AND REGULATORY PROTECTIONS.
Nothing in this Act--
(1) abridges the rights of any property owner (whether public or private), including the right to refrain from participating in any plan, project, program, or activity conducted within the National Heritage Area;
(2) requires any property owner to permit public access (including access by Federal, State, or local agencies) to the property of the property owner, or to modify public access or use of property of the property owner under any other Federal, State, or local law;
(3) alters any duly adopted land use regulation, approved land use plan, or other regulatory authority of any Federal, State, or local agency, including but not limited to the authority of Federal, State, or local governments to make safety improvements or increase the capacity of existing roads or to construct new roads, or conveys any land use or other regulatory authority to any local coordinating entity;
(4) authorizes or implies the reservation or appropriation of water or water rights;
(5) diminishes the authority of the State to manage fish and wildlife, including the regulation of fishing and hunting within the National Heritage Area; or
(6) creates any liability, or affects any liability under any other law, of any private property owner with respect to any person injured on the private property.
Can it get any clearer than that? No one in the management entity that coordinates the Heritage Area activities can tell a property owner what to do with their property. Nor can the management entity override state or local decision-making. Yet at no point in the article does the reporter refer to the actual legislative language or ask the Heritage Foundation how they have come to their disingenuous conclusion in spite of the plain language of the statute. No voice of opposition to this particular point is quoted. They just get to say it and it hangs there unchallenged, leading readers to think that it must have some validity, and that there is some actual controversy at play.
Of course in many jurisdictions property owners do have to answer to actual government entities when they develop their property. This radical concept is called zoning. If restrictions are made to the use of land, they are made as part of local or regional plans and are an outgrowth of land-use planning and the political process, which, as everyone knows, can often be quite contentious. Maybe the Heritage Foundation doesn’t like the idea of zoning or property regulation in general, but land-use policies are not made by Heritage Areas. Zoning can exist whether an area is designated a Heritage Area or not, and to connect the two is willfully false.
The same principle applies to voluntary individual land-use decisions. Federal, state, and local governments sometimes offer incentives for the preservation of open space and sensitive scenic areas, through the use of tools like conservation easements, which are wildly popular in Virginia. But no one can require a property owner to use these techniques. They are voluntary, and, again, the Heritage Area designation has absolutely nothing to do with this, other than to provide willing landowners with an additional reason to conserve their land. It seems these so-called property-rights groups want landowners to have the right to do anything they want with their property except save it.
The article also doesn’t explain the key point that Heritage Areas can only exist with the support of all the state and local governments affected; in fact, explicit local support is required in order to get the designation. The designation is not imposed by the feds against anyone’s will. Nor are Heritage Areas some kind of lefty conspiracy fresh out of "The Monkey Wrench Gang." In the case of the Journey Through Hallowed Ground, for example, the lead congressional sponsors were Sen. John Warner and Rep. Frank Wolf, both Republicans. At the local level, every city and county government signed on, an unlikely occurrence if the expected outcome was some shadowy "quasi-government body" landing in green helicopters and seizing farmland from helpless landowners.
State and local governments support the Heritage Area programbecause it helps promote heritage tourism; spurs educational programs; offers the opportunity for some modest matching grants; encourages the development of partnerships and collaboration among governments, businesses, preservationists, and other community groups; and creates regional awareness that all the communities within the Heritage Area are part of a broader cultural and natural landscape whose value and importance should be considered when local decisions are made.
Absurdly, the final word in the article is given to Peyton Knight of the National Center for Public Policy Research. Of course the Post reporter doesn’t tell you that the NCPPR is closely associated with Jack Abramoff and was the group that sponsored some of the infamous Tom Delay junkets, among other misdeeds.
Knight’s quote in the article is actually instructive, when he says, "We should never seek to honor the heroes of our nation's founding by trampling the sacred principles for which they fought and died -- namely property rights and limited, local government."
The fact is the heritage area designation exists precisely to honor the heroes of the nation’s founding by creating public awareness about, and respect for, irreplaceable scenic, cultural, and historic resources, many of which were created by those very founders. The designation forces no one to do anything, but does create a framework for local and private decision-making. It’s a statement that there is something valuable here, something that needs to be saved and nurtured. The fact that some value other than outright greed might play into the way humans relate to the land and their cultural heritage is apparently too much for the Heritage Foundation and NCPPR to bear.
These groups have a right to their point of view, but they have no right to spew outright lies and have them reported verbatim and unanalyzed by the media. Maybe we can get the media itself designated a heritage area and get them some help to restore the journalistic landscape to its former self.