The lady doth protest too much, me thinks…
— Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2
Early in my career I prosecuted a businessman for bribing a public housing official. After accepting the bribe the official got cold feet, dimed out the businessman (a recent New York transplant to Florida) and ultimately agreed to testify against him. Upon my advising him and his attorney that we’d “flipped” the official, the businessman said to me (to the chagrin of his lawyer), “The difference between politicians down here and the ones back up north is that once you buy them up there — they stay bought!”
Having studied, practiced, and taught “the law” for nearly forty years I’ve learned some facts of life about the subject you can’t read in the law library. One of which is that the more complex you make laws and regulations the greater the opportunity, and likelihood, they will be manipulated. Upon learning that the Pagosa Land Use and Development Code (LUDC) was 280-pages long, my first impressions was, “That’s a recipe for corruption!”
Back in the seventies the population of my Florida home-town county (Pinellas) exploded, and has been on that trajectory ever since. The effects of overpopulation have now made even visiting there unpleasant for me.
For reference, Pinellas County is the peninsula between Tampa bay and the Gulf on the west coast. Simple geography dictates there is limited space to support population growth. That limitation is exacerbated by the subdivisions, condos, and apartment complexes that have spread like kudzu since the seventies.
As it turned out, some of that development resulted from corrupt voting by county commissioners,
One ostensible purpose of land use regulations is to establish objective, legally binding standards thus — theoretically — precluding corruption. Instead they encourage it. By creating byzantine regulations government officials are able to use them to thwart development, which is a good thing if preserving environmental and density integrity is the objective. If, however, complex regulations afford officials the opportunity to “play favorites” in granting waivers of the regs, then the more complicated the better. The more regs that need to be waived, the more opportunities for corruption.
Having explored what would be required for us to build a residence on our Aspen Springs property, we learned compliance with various regulations increased construction costs beyond what we were willing to spend. Queries about the possibility of waiving some of those regs hit a stone wall. We realized it would cost us less to rent lodging on our visits for many years to come.
So if discouraging the building of another dwelling in Archuleta County was the purpose of the regs — they succeeded. If the purpose was revenue, in the form of permit-fees, they missed the mark.
Over the years, we’re likely to have paid far more in increased property taxes than the one time permit fees. Archuleta County isn’t even recouping the lost revenue through our lodging taxes, since we often stay east of Pagosa at the Bruce Spruce Ranch on Hwy 160 – which is in Mineral County. So in regard to revenue, the Archuleta powers that be shot themselves in the foot!
Being from Florida, it comes as no surprise that while we can’t get waivers, a Pagosa developer can obtain waivers of LUDC regs. Such waivers for developers here in Florida, by government officials, is virtually a cottage industry — with the concomitant destruction of the quality of life.
I grew up in Florida when it was a paradise. Now I’m considering what I never thought I would: moving out of Florida. I’ve learned the hard way what Don Henley meant when he sang, “Call some place paradise — kiss it goodbye!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0_suHGTJW4
Though Bill Hudson and I have never met in person, through extended e-mails over the past few years we now consider each other friends. We certainly don’t agree on everthing, as our many e-mail debates can attest. But due to our mutual respect for each other’s motives, those debates have remained civil.
So I’m chagrined to learn of Bill’s persecution for merely doing his job as a volunteer planning commissioner. I don’t doubt he may have ‘rocked the boat’ regarding the proposed downtown Pagosa development, but neither do I doubt his honest motives.
Bill, naively, believed the stated aspirational purpose of the LUDC – to serve the interests of the citizens of Pagosa Springs – when in fact it is merely an instrument for cronyism. Having lived my life in a state where the cozy relationship between government regulators, and the building developers they regulate, is woven into our political DNA I grasp the subrosa purpose of the LUDC. Why else would one of Hudson’s fellow commissioners refer to the LUDC as “a guide for developers to use, but not hard and fast law…”?
Black’s Law Dictionary (8th Ed.) defines ‘code’ as “ a complete system of positive law, carefully arranged and officially promulgated”. (‘Positive law’ is that created by government.) No where can I find a definition of ‘code’ to mean a mere “guide” that is not “hard and fast”.
That is unless you interpret an additional definition from Black’s (that a code incorporates not just written statutes but also the “unwritten law on the subject”) to mean the unwritten law in Pagosa is to waive the LUDC for certain people. If such is the case, one would expect the criteria for who gets a waiver to be included in the LUDC.
But then that would thwart the opportunity for crony capitalism.
No doubt some may be offended by what I’m suggesting. But I’ve spent a career drawing inferences from facts, and the facts are that some want Bill Hudson removed from the planning commission because he believes the LUDC means what it says, and apparently asks too many inconvenient questions.
That some have responded by seeking to remove Hudson from the Commission brings to mind Hamlet’s mother.
Gary Beatty lives between Florida and Pagosa Springs. He retired after 30 years as a prosecutor for the State of Florida, has a doctorate in law, is Board Certified in Criminal Trial law by the Florida Supreme Court, and is now a law professor.