April 2008

There Oughta Be a Law

By Robert Stephens

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There was an interesting little flier in the local Sunday newspaper this week. It was a one-page piece of card stock from State Representative Sara Lampe entitled, “There Oughta Be a Law.” Her premise is that she represents her constituents and that she wants to know what they feel should be enacted.

She asks them to send in their “best ideas.” The reward: if your idea is selected (nothing about by whom or the criteria), you can “see it drafted into a bill” and Representative Lampe will “introduce you as a special guest to the House of Representatives.”

While I applaud her initiative in trying to get her constituents’ ideas, I would have much preferred she ask, “What laws get in your way?” or “what laws are bad and need to be repealed?” Now, THAT would show her to be a responsive representative.

Ronald Reagan used to get big laughs when he would tell the story about the person showing up and saying, “I’m from the government. I’m here to help.” The same principle applies here. For example, count the words in the U. S. Constitution. Then count the words (if you can count that high) in the Missouri Constitution. The difference is huge. We are over-regulated on all sides. Try reading either the federal or state tax codes.

Another example: one of the committees that Representative Lampe serves on is the “Interim Committee on MSHSAA Reform.” Now that daunting acronym stands for the Missouri State High School Activities Association, a group that oversees high school sports events and music festivals. My question is why the state legislature is even involved in these activities. There is an independent Board of Directors—let them direct. From what I know of today’s parents of high school athletes—if there’s a problem—they are going to sound off to the Board.

This is the same principle that caused so many of us to ask why the Congress was having hearings on Roger Clemens and drug use in professional baseball when there were so many more pressing issues to discuss.

I suspect Sara Lampe will receive many responses—at least I hope she does. It’ll show that folks are paying attention and are interested. However, I also suspect that she will discover the same phenomenon that I did while visiting the Missouri Liberty Coalition: what one person favors another opposes.

And she’ll find that folks are essentially selfish—they want what will benefit themselves in the short run and ignore the consequences for the long term. Don’t believe me? Locally, look at the major flap going on right now regarding storage units, trailers, and other containers. Our city government is trying to paint a very broad brushstroke over a very small problem. Let’s start over on that one.

On the state level? Rod Jetton’s insertion of the “village” language into a bill and Robert Plaster’s subsequent attempt to get around the Taney County zoning restrictions just stink. How much legislative and senate time will be taken to undo such a sneaky, underhanded action? If you don’t like the zoning laws, get rid of them. That would be a good start.

Need another national example? Just look at the mortgage crisis and the recent behavior of realtors and mortgage lenders. Now a lot of people are learning a very expensive, painful, but important lesson: there STILL are no free lunches. They’re looking for government bail-outs now. Whatever happened to personal responsibility?

So, while I applaud Representative Lampe’s desire to obtain her constituents opinions, the implied promise of “new laws” really ought to worry southwest Missourians. And that’s why I will send my suggestion in to Ms. Lampe, asking her to help enact a zero growth-type of law for the laws of the State of Missouri. My suggestion will be that—for every law enacted by the state legislature—one law has to be repealed. For every committee established by the House of Representative, one should be disbanded. Perhaps in this way, we can once again feel like we, the people, are in control of our government again.