Liberty Matters News Service
October 10, 2008
Don’t Miss “CALL America 2008!” Conference
November 13-15
Renaissance Austin Hotel
Austin, Texas
You only have five weeks left to register for the “CALL America 2008 – Coordinating America’s Local Leaders” Conference. Seating is limited so you’ll want to register soon. The discounted room rate at the Renaissance Hotel expires in less than 2 weeks (October 23rd), so make your reservations today! This conference will focus on the most important strategy being implemented across the nation today that is protecting local economies through the “Coordination Strategy.” It will teach how local government can protect their citizens, businesses, tax base, and private property from federal and state regulations. Hear from Fred Kelly Grant, the attorney and architect of “Coordination” who has implemented this strategy for over 15 years in Idaho and California. In 2008 alone, 16 new locations across the nation have started implementing this strategy. Counties and towns are having success ensuring the local priorities and property rights of the citizens are respected when facing endangered species issues, park expansions, closure-of-access through Travel Management Plans, transportation corridors and more. Click Here to read a few success stories. Our last vestige of hope, common sense, and true political representation lies at the local level of government. This is one of the greatest civics-oriented conferences you can attend. Bring control back home where it belongs and begin to control your own destiny by bringing federal and state government to your table requiring them to make their land use plans and policies consistent with yours. That is what you will learn at CALL American 2008, that’s what “Coordination” will do for you!
Register Now!
Coast-to-Coast, We’re Under Siege
It is happening from coast-to-coast. Americans are finding that they are being prohibited from using recreation areas they have long enjoyed because environmental groups consider human activity detrimental to selected birds, animals or plants and sue to keep people from using “public lands” to protect the flavor-of-the-day specie. Use of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore Recreation Area (CHNSRA) is largely off limits to most activity thanks to a lawsuit filed in December 2007, by The Audubon Society, Defenders of Wildlife and the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC). The groups sued the National Park Service (NPS) claiming that Off-Road Vehicle use in the CHNSRA was illegal because NPS had never filed a permanent ORV/Species management plan into the public record. As it turns out, a plan had been filed in 1978, but had been lost. The groups were able to find a judge to agree with them and federal Judge Terrance Boyle of Raleigh, NC, threatened to close all beaches permanently as a result. That threat forced beach access proponents to “negotiate” with the environmental groups and eventually hammered out a “consent decree” that drastically reduced ORV use. That decree, says Alan Pitt, “has been an absolute disaster to the local [economy].” Some businesses are down 30 percent from last year. Increased bird and turtle nest buffers have taken, in some cases, two-thirds of the previously open beaches away from users. “Bird numbers are slightly up, but at a cost of several millions of dollars (to the local economy),” says Mr. Pitt. Frank Folb, president of the Avon Property Owners Association, and a member of an advisory committee trying to work out palatable regulations for beach use, wrote a letter to Mike Murrey, superintendent of CHNSRA, complaining that it appeared NPS would rather carry water for the environmentalists than work to solve local concerns. Dr. Michael Berry, a private consultant and former EPA senior manager and scientist, summed it up best saying: “The public needs to know the facts about the so-called ‘best available science’ given as the justification for denial of public access…” “Best available science, as touted by the environmental groups, is opinion disguised as science.” Dr. Berry concluded: “We the public have lost control of our government and our precious national seashore…"
Nashville Woman Beats Eminent Domain
Nashville, Tennessee resident Joy Ford bested the City of Nashville in its attempt to snatch her property for a private developer’s new office complex. In June of this year, the Nashville Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency (MDHA) announced it was using eminent domain to take Ms. Ford’s property on Nashville’s famous Music Row to turn it over to the Houston-based developer, Lionstone Group. MDHA dropped the eminent domain proceedings in August, but demanded Ford give up the entire back portion of her property. Ford refused that offer, but, with the help of the Institute for Justice and Nashville eminent domain attorney, Jim Fisher, she was able to exchange part of her back parking lot (50 feet wide and 73 feet deep), for property next to her building (49 feet wide by 105 feet deep). MDHA had no part in the negotiations. “This agreement demonstrates what can happen when private parties sit down to work something out without the government,” said Scott Bullock senior attorney with the Institute for Justice. “I am elated with this agreement,” Ford said. “This battle was never about money. It was about protecting my rights and keeping my family’s legacy on Music Row.” Ford doesn’t intend to rest on her laurels; instead she has vowed to help other property owners save their property from the city’s eminent domain wrecking ball. “I will not rest until eminent domain is stopped being used on behalf of private interests.”
Nashville’s Joy Ford wins eminent domain lawsuit against private developer
Environmentalists Want to Manage Our Forests
The Supreme Court is set to hear a long-smoldering case to determine when environmental activists can tell federal land managers how or when to do their jobs. The argument over whether the Forest Service (FS) could go ahead with timber salvage work without allowing public input began in 2002 when 150,700 acres in the Sequoia National Forest went up in flames, killing 80 percent of the trees. In an effort to salvage the still-valuable timber, the next year the Forest Service put up a 238 acre parcel, Burnt Ridge, for logging. Based on a FS policy that stated timber projects of less than 250 acres didn’t require public comment, the Service didn’t call for input. Of course the environmentalists sued and the Service withdrew the Burnt Ridge project. Even though the environmentalists stopped the Burnt Ridge project, they are challenging rules that exempt some Forest Service projects from standard public comment and administrative appeal procedures. The Bush administration’s argument is that since the original timber sale issue was resolved, environmentalists must wait for another specific timber project to complain about. “This case is about the most significant environmental policy issue to be heard by the Supreme Court in a long time,” said Ara Marderosian, executive director of Sequoia ForestKeeper, one of the complainants. The California Forestry Association, the National Association of Home Builders, and the American Farm Bureau Federation filed an amicus curiae brief in Summers v. Earth Island Institute, noting: “When non-regulated third parties challenge those regulations...(and) prevail, district courts too frequently issue nationwide injunctions against the rule.” “Victory,” Marderosian said, “would confirm our lower court wins that re-established the public’s right to participate in management of public lands – lands owned by the people.”
Court to decide when public lands management can be challenged