Chris Powell: Block housing development and your property taxes may rise

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Blame for rising property taxes in Connecticut may be shared more broadly than most people think. It's not just the fault of elected officials who yield to the demands of special interests, particularly the demands of government- employee unions for higher wages and benefits. 

Property taxes are determined in large part by property  values, and the great inflation created by the spectacular overspending and over-borrowing by the Trump and Biden administrations and Congress have increased the nominal value of nearly everything, including residential property. 

Then there is the flood of illegal immigration. The millions of illegal immigrants admitted in recent years must live somewhere, and the federal government and state government are often subsidizing their housing, causing scarcity. Without so many illegal immigrants and government subsidies for their housing, demand would be reduced, more properties would be vacant, and residential rents, prices and property values would fall.

There is still another cause of housing scarcity and rising property values and taxes: state and municipal policy that restricts supply, such as exclusive zoning and what is called farmland preservation, a politically correct mechanism for preventing housing development. People tend not to associate these policies with rising property taxes, which homeowners pay directly and tenants pay indirectly through their rent. 

But maybe the association will be noticed after more periodic municipality-wide property revaluations, such as the ones that New London and Norwich recently underwent.

According to The Day of New London, residential-property values in the little city just rose by an average of 60 percent, and many people are shocked by the corresponding increase in their property taxes, since commercial- property values didn't rise that much if at all.

With employment booming at submarine manufacturer Electric Boat in neighboring Groton, New London and nearby towns especially need more housing. But since the housing shortage, rising property values, and rising property taxes are statewide and national phenomena, any town could facilitate a building boom and still not knock housing values down much.

At least people should take their rising property-tax bills as a reminder not to complain so much about new housing. Obstructing new housing means scarcity, and scarcity means that housing prices will be bid up, taking housing taxes with them.

LEAVE IDAHO ALONE: Abortion rights are more secure in Connecticut than they are in many other states.

Having long ago incorporated into its own law the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade, Connecticut leaves abortion unrestricted prior to fetal viability, and even then few seem to be guarding against the abortion of viable fetuses. Connecticut also allows abortions for minors without parental consent, enabling child molesters to erase the evidence of their crimes. 

Still, the abortion policies of other states have Connecticut Atty. Gen. William Tong in a frenzy. Lately Tong has been fulminating about Idaho's restrictive abortion law and has even had filed a brief in an Idaho case in federal court, though the case has no bearing on Connecticut.

Speaking of Idaho's law the other day, the attorney general said: "This threat and severe state abortion bans are not going away. We're going to have to keep fighting these fights in every court in every state where patients' lives and reproductive freedom are at risk."

But why? Reversing Roe two years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court didn't restrict abortion anywhere. It just returned abortion policy to the states, restoring some federalism.   

Who is Connecticut's attorney general to seek to override democracy in Idaho? Presumably if enough of the women of Idaho wanted their state's abortion law to be like Connecticut's, they could mobilize to achieve it. Apparently many if, not most, women in Idaho want abortion tightly restricted. 

No one has to live in Idaho or Connecticut.

And where does the attorney general find the authority to intervene in cases having no bearing on Connecticut? State law confines the attorney general's office to legal matters "in which the state is a party or is interested." Abortion law in Idaho is not a state interest in Connecticut, just a partisan political one.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net). 

Summer folks vs. a would-be oyster farmer

Poor Richard Cook, the Mashpee, Mass., fisherman who wants to put in a little (two-acre) oyster farm a quarter mile off the summer homes of rich  people in that Cape Cod town. He would seem to have gained the permits, etc., needed for the project, but..... The rich folks (who include the Krafts, who own the New England Patriots) are using every legal trick in the book and their influence in the Massachusetts legislature to  stop what would be a very quiet, low key and environmentally friendly project that speaks to the the nifty idea of expanding one of New England most lucrative (and relatively few) cash crops -- shellfish. The persistent Mr. Cook has been trying to do the oyster farm since 2011 but failed to adequately consider the ability of a few well-heeled people to use America's stuck-in-molasses civil law and legislative Christmas-treeing to stop anything they don't like by making the lawyers' fees too expensive for most people.

In fact, such oyster farms used to be all up and and down the sandy sections of southern New England's coast. They were considered charming,   a daily character-building  example of hard work and a healthy connection to Mother Nature.   They provided inspiration for many painters. Among other benefits,  such shellfish farms help filter and clean the water. Popponesset Bay would be better having the oyster farm.

The summer gentry seek  to create a bogus "marine sanctuary'' via a bill on Beacon Hill to cover the  area where Mr. Cook wants to set up his oyster farm. (I suspect that these summer folks love to eat oysters -- from somewhere!) Sadly for  Mr. Cook,  he doesn't have the cash for campaign contributions that might get the attention of  the most important solons.

Rich summer folks  increasingly throw their weight around, and not just in their  summer colonies,  and many seem willing to stop anything in their sight that might remind them that other people have to make money,  if  not from "investments,'' even if it's in as traditional and healthy sector as shellfish aquaculture. (The battles against coastal wind turbines within distant sight of mansions is a more famous war.)

I have nothing against rick folks -- some of my favorite relatives and friends are in that clan! But I don't like grossly unequal application of influence.

Mr. Cook has already moved the proposed oyster  farm a bit further away from the rich folks on, who often act as though they own everything from from their front porches to the oceanside horizon. But nothing is enough for people who think that they can buy anything.

Still, I suppose that it should be noted that town officials themselves seem to favor the farm, despite the big property taxes paid by the Krafts.