Boulder’s proposed grocery bag fee is garbage. It trashes our liberties

A version of this article was printed in the Boulder Daily Camera on May 19, 2012.

By Boulder’s standard of “zero waste,” the City Council’s plan to restrict plastic bag use is garbage. Regardless, such restrictions are foul rubbish. They empower bag bullies to self-righteously trash our liberties.

Plastic bags contribute just 0.4 percent of Boulder County’s municipal solid waste, says a recent Waste Composition Study.  By weight, there’s more than ten times as much recyclable plastic, “clean dimensional lumber,” and items accepted at the Center for Hard to Recycle Materials. Instead of shaking down shoppers, bag banners should wade through dumps to extract these items for reuse or recycling.

Bag restrictions stifle reuse and recycling trends. Consumers reuse plastic grocery bags at home, and restrictions increase sales of thicker, single-use plastic bags. Plastic bag recycling has increased by 50% since 2005, yielding durable plastic and lumber products,reports Moore Recycling Associates. RecycleYourPlasticBag.com lists local places to recycle bags. The City Council should add its meetings to this list.

Meanwhile, durable bags meant for reuse “are seldom if ever washed” and “almost all” contain bacteria, concludes a Loma Linda University study. Just last week MSNBC reported that one such bag spread “nasty … norovirus infections” to a youth soccer team.

Comparing various bag types, the British Environment Agency found that plastic bags had the lowest “environmental impact,” which is most determined by resources required for manufacturing, rather than transport and disposal.

Regardless of which bag is best, retailers have a right to distribute bags, and customers have a right to discard them through voluntary means. Boulder City Council, stop your bag bullying.

If you say government authorities can justly restrict voluntary exchange of a plastic bag, then you’re conceding that can justly restrict any other type of voluntary exchange. You can no longer you can no longer oppose any government action by arguing that it violates people’s right to liberty.

“Free” parking isn’t free, and the benefits of charging for it

This piece originally appeared in the Boulder Daily Camera in response to the question:

[A] proposed test program was tentatively approved for Chautauqua, which would have time-limited parking for areas within the landmark, but outside of the parking lot near the green. The test program will run in June, July and August. What do you think? What do you think about parking and parking restrictions in Boulder?

Since demand for “free” parking spaces near Chautauqua exceeds supply during popular hiking months, clearly the monetary price to park is too low.  With “free” parking, the monetary price is zero, but non-monetary prices become costly: time, inconvenience, and frustration.  Many Chautauqua hikers would happily pay some money to avoid such hassles – if the price is right. Hence, the City should certainly find a way to charge for parking.

Of the approaches described in the City Council’s April 17 agenda packet, a combination of parking permits and time-limited parking sounds best. However, this proposal limits permit sales to only Chautauqua guests, Boulder residents, and those who work in Boulder. Why not sell permits to any willing buyer?  The City could discount permits to Chautauqua guests, residents, and local employees to roughly account for taxes they pay.

Also, how about earmarking the Chautauqua revenues for trail maintenance?

For per-hour parking, in Chautauqua or elsewhere, the City should consider pay-by-phone methods, which would allow hikers to extend their meter time via text message or smartphone app. CU-Boulder uses ParkMobile, while San Francisco’s SFpark project uses PayByPhone.com.

The City Council should also consider leasing its parking lots and curbside parking areas to for-profit or non-profit operators. Several cities have made such arrangements, as discussed in the Reason Foundation‘s recent Annual Privatization Reports [2010, 2011]. Such leases bring cash-strapped cities significant non-tax revenue while freeing them from financial risk and maintenance costs. Cities have also retained the power to approve or reject leasers’ proposed rate increases.

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In the video above, UCLA professor Donald Shoup explains Pasadena revitalized a shopping district by charging for curb-side parking.

Red-light cameras can blame drivers for poor traffic engineering

A movement against red light traffic cameras “appears to [be] gaining traction across the country,” reported MSNBC last week. Boulder officials want to add more red light cameras. Is this a good idea?

Say an intersection has an abnormally high rate of red light violations. Using red-light cameras puts blame on the drivers. But this seems unfair, as the same drivers also use safer intersections nearby. It’s more reasonable to first look for deficiencies in signal timing, visibility of signals, signs, and lane markings.

To encourage such solutions, the National Motorists Association offers a “$10,000 Ticket Camera Challenge” for intersections with high red light violations. The NMA guarantees “a minimum 50-percent reduction in red-light violations through the application of engineering solutions” or it will “pay the community $10,000 [for] any traffic safety program or project it chooses.”

Traffic cameras are also legally questionable, as defendants cannot confront their accuser.  A California Superior Court Judge recently struck down eight cases of alleged red light running for these reasons. “Defendants here are entitled to be confronted with the testifying witness at trial,” she wrote.

As for effectiveness, data from the Boulder’s Transportation division shows decreased accidents at intersections after camera installations. But other factors could have been relevant. For example, changes in signal timing, all-red durations, and traffic volume. Further, there was no mention of how accident rates changed at intersections without cameras.

These shortcomings are typical of red light traffic camera studies showing benefits.  A report by the Transportation Research Board states: “In many cases, the flaw in the analysis was the lack of a proper control group.”  In some cities, traffic accidents increased after the addition of cameras, as the NMA’s website documents.

A version of this article was printed in the Boulder Daily Camera on July 2, 2011.

Boulder & Denver bike-share: boon or boondoggle?

B-cycle is Boulder’s new bike share program. Denver’s B-cycle program is a year old. Does “B” stand for boon or boondoggle?  The Boulder program’s start-up costs included half a million dollars taken from taxpayers: half collected by the City of Boulder, half from federal “stimulus” funds.  Denver B-cycle received $210,000 from the “stimulus.”  Yes, B-cycle’s bikes and technologies do sound impressive. But if it’s a true boon, then it should have been able to raise sufficient start-up funds from investors, sponsors, and donors.

Some might argue that private funding could not have built B-cycle. But as economist Henry Hazlitt would say, B-Cycle “has in fact been built by private capital – the capital that was expropriated in taxes.”  We won’t see the goods, services, and non-profit ventures that never materialize because governments took money by force from people who would have spent it differently.

Potentially expensive bike maintenance may deter private investors from investing in bike-share ventures. As law professor Steve Clowney describes: “No individual bears a significant portion of the costs if they damage a bicycle … users have little incentive to take care of the bikes.”  The New York Times reports that sustaining Paris’s bike-share requires the repairing “some 1,500 bicycles a day,” or seven percent of its fleet.

Or maybe Montreal’s experience deterred investors. Because of high start-up costs, “the non-profit agency that runs the city’s bike-rental program … is running a $31.7 million deficit,” reported the CBC.

Voluntary donations, sponsorships, and investments should fund B-cycle. It should be a revenue source for Boulder and Denver, not an expenditure of taxpayers’ money. For example, they could charge B-cycle for placing “B-stations” on city-owned land.

A version of this article was published in the Boulder Daily Camera on May 21, 2011.

Thanks to Marc Scribner at the Competitive Enterprise Institute for his post on Washington DC’s bike-share program.

The Henry Hazlitt quote is from his excellent book, Economics in One Lesson, which the Foundation for Economics Education has put on-line.

City of Boulder should consider outsourcing, privatizing services

Background from the Daily Camera:

Boulder City Manager Jane Brautigam has been working this year to move to a “priority-based” budget, in which the things most important to the community are first in line for funding.

My response, published in the Camera:

The Boulder City Council should consider saving money the way private organizations often do: by outsourcing some of its operations to private firms. For-profit and non-profit firms that compete for government contracts have incentive to provide low-cost quality services. A firm won’t get a contract if its bid is too high, and its contract won’t be renewed if it does a lousy job. Typical savings from privatization are between five and twenty percent, reports the Reason Foundation.

The towns of Roswell and Sandy Springs, Georgia each have around 90,000 residents. But Sandy Springs’ annual budget is around $300 less per person. Why? Sandy Springs has outsourced many of its services to private-sector firms. Unlike surrounding cities with budget deficits, Sandy Springs has a surplus.

Outsourcing some Public Works services could be worthwhile. Consider Centennial, CO. In 2008 Centennial signed a five-year agreement with a private firm to “manage all public works functions for the city.” This includes “traffic engineering and operations, permit processing, inspections, administrative services, and street and roadside maintenance, including snow removal.”

Also examine Parks and Recreation. Consider outsourcing their operation to private firms.  Such privatization efforts have yielded 20% cost-savings. Or better yet, could the City raise money by leasing its facilities – rec centers, fields, pools, and golf course – to private organizations to manage them?

Or how about increasing user fees for Parks and Recreation programs? Don’t some programs compete with private firms, and make taxpayers subsidize other people’s leisure activities? This is both costly and unfair.

This was originally printed in the Daily Camera on July 31.

A couple of Daily Camera articles about this:

• Boulder’s low priorities for 2011 budget include SWAT team, EMT training
• Boulder city manager defends ranking public services

And the Priority Based Budget Memo dated July 27 by the City Manager and others. This includes one method by which they would prioritize city services.

End Boulder’s unnatural monopoly in electricity & natural gas service

Governments should not grant monopolies, but the Boulder City Council would by renewing Xcel’s franchise. Xcel would remain “the community’s sole provider for electrical and natural gas service,” says the City’s website. Xcel should do business without government protection from competition.  Competitors should be free to contract with land owners to run wire and gas lines, and sell their products to interested customers.

Some advocate another form of unnatural monopoly -  municipalization -  where government owns the electric utility. Supporters claim that “munis” have lower prices than franchised investor-owned utilities like Xcel. But this presents a false alternative between two types of government-created monopolies. Government should stick to its proper role: enforcing laws that protect individual rights. Here, this means repealing political controls that inhibit free-markets in electrical and natural gas service.

Others advocate “community choice aggregation.” This sounds like mandatory open access, which Texas has — Google “Texas  electricity shopping.” Mandatory open access involves forced competition that violates grid owners’ property rights: grid owners must sell grid access to competing power producers at contrived prices.

Maybe government-enforced competition is preferable to a government-enforced monopoly. But why settle for this?  Electricity is more a government-created monopoly than a “natural” one. Though state and federal controls inhibit competition, utilities compete for customers in about 10 U.S. towns. Such competition was more common before governments imposed regulations on them, as documented in “Electric Avenues,” published by the Cato Institute. Since the electric utilities themselves lobbied for these regulations, ask yourself who has benefited.

This was originally printed in the Boulder Daily Camera on July 17 2010.

More references on free-markets in electricity generation and distribution:

• Give Consumers Choice on Utilities, Vernon Smith and Lynne Kiesling at Reason.org.
• “Electricity Policy,” Chapter 44, Cato Handbook on Policy, 6th Edition, (2005).
• Clyde Wayne Crews, “Electric utility reform: The free market alternative to mandatory open access”, The Electricity Journal, Volume 10, Issue 10, December 1997, p. 32-43 [pdf][html at CEI.org]
• Electric Choices, Deregulation and the Future of Electric Power, Rowman and Littlefield, 2006. (associated with the Independent Institute.)
• Raymond C. Niles, Property Rights and the Crisis of the Electric Grid, The Objective Standard, Summer 2008.

Image via OpenClipArt.

Boulder drops charges against Seth Brigham

A couple of weeks ago the Daily Camera published my recommendation that the City of Boulder drop charges against Seth Brigham.  Fortunately, the city did – a day before the publication.   (Yes, this is not exactly breaking news, but the video is worth watching.)

Drop the charges. Even if Brigham’s refusing the police officer’s requests justified his arrest, it’s not worth it. Our tax dollars are better spent on prosecuting criminals who actually hurt people, rather than on an eccentric guy who might drag the city in a costly lawsuit for being silenced at a City Council meeting.

Two minutes. That’s how long the Council could have waited to avoid the controversy. Brigham spoke for one minute before Council members asked the arresting officer to, in the officer’s words, “remove Brigham from the room.” The Channel 8 video (on the Camera site) shows that Bringham remained polite when speaking and knew of his three-minute time allotment.

The City Council website says that members of the public “may address any city business” during the public participation segment. Before being cut off, the one issue Brigham explicitly mentioned concerned campaign contributions accepted by Council member Suzy Ageton.  Mayor Osborne said “It’s not appropriate to call out any individual Council members.”  This isn’t “city business”? Brigham wasn’t there to discuss a Council member’s hair style or taste in movies, after all.

Even if you think Brigham’s issue was not “city business,” there must have been a better way than to involve the police. Brigham was not intimidating or threatening anyone. Even rudeness would have been an improvement. For example, the Council members could have started texting or web-surfing on their phones while Brigham finished. We’d all be better off.

For Sale: Boulder City Council

The Daily Camera reports:

Some Boulder residents are crying foul over bundles of checks being offered to some City Council candidates by supporters of a controversial development …  in the weeks before a final vote on the property’s area plan.

The Camera printed my comments in the October 25 edition:

Voters often want government to provide the impossible: benefits with no trade-offs. For instance, expanded government programs, lower tax rates, and a balanced budget — all at the same time. This is another example. If you approve of politicians dictating how developers may use their property, do not be shocked or outraged when developers “invest” in politicians for permission to develop as they please. As P.J. O’Rourke observes: “When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.”

Boulder land use restrictions undermine rights & personal responsibility

The Daily Camera reports:

The Boulder City Council on Tuesday night agreed on the details of new house-size regulations in Boulder, and are likely to approve the ordinance at a special meeting Thursday night. This week, they eased some of the earlier suggestions – for instance, they will allow a single-family home to cover up to 35 percent of a lot, up from 30 percent – but some opponents and two former mayors are still against the measure.

My response in the Daily Camera, September 18, 2009:

The City has no right to restrict the size of a home on a property owner’s land.  The land does not belong to the city. If the City Council, or anyone for that matter, wants to prevent construction on part of a home lot, they should go about it peacefully, without threatening people with political force.

Here’s an idea: buy the land with your own resources.  It’s called an easement. To quote a dictionary definition, an easement is “a right held by one property owner to make use of the land of another for a limited purpose.”  If you want to prevent construction on someone else’s lot, then offer to buy an easement on part of the lot.  If cost is an issue, you can pool money from like-minded neighbors and entice the lot owner with a generous offer. To learn more, do a web search for “how to buy an easement.”

Other alternatives to government prohibitions on land use include Homeowners Associations and, to use a legal term, “covenants running with the land.” You can look this up, too.  If Boulder laws stand in the way of HOAs, easements, or covenants, then perhaps they need revising.

To generalize my point I’ll adapt JFK’s words: Ask not what your government can force other people to do for you.  Ask what you can do for yourself, and how you can cooperate with others on a voluntary basis to achieve your values.

Free-market alternatives to zoning

The Boulder Daily Camera published my piece in response to Boulder’s proposed  “pop-and-scrape” land use regulations:

Government has no right to legislate how you build on your property.  However, if you’re concerned that your neighbors will block a scenic view, or paint a mural of Elvis on their house, there are ways to deal  with such potential conflicts without empowering government to make
one-size-fits-all legislation.

One approach involves what Professor Robert H. Nelson calls “Privatizing the Neighborhood:” buying a home affiliated with a homeowners’ association (HOA) that has an architectural rules
committee. [See here, here, and here] Unlike a government, HOAs cannot extend their jurisdiction to homeowners who have not opted in. Since HOAs are very local and small, participants are often neighbors and hence have incentive to settle disagreements in a civil manner. You would also have more influence on your HOA than on Boulder City Council.

A different approach uses common law rather than legislation. Under English Common Law’s “ancient lights” easement, neighboring property owners could own the space above a neighboring property. For example, if they are long-time owners and construction of a tall building would block light from reaching their property. A developer wanting to build a tall building could conceivably offer to purchase the easement for a negotiated price. Conversely, concerned citizens could negotiate a light and air easement over a property.

Compared to the proposed “pop and scrape” legislation, HOAs and common law traditions allow for variations in individual preferences and  situations and allow creative methods of conflict resolution. Rigid  legislation does not allow for that, and just rouses political conflict.

(Thanks to Ari Armstrong, Paul Hsieh, Ralph Shnelvar, and Randal O’Toole for their suggestions.)