Landowners deserve protection, too

If you think the Critical Areas Ordinance for Whitefish is fine just as it is, you probably don't own any property and don't hope to build or buy property sometime in the future. If you did, you would see things altogether differently.

James Madison put the point well in his essay on property in the National Gazette, March 29, 1702: "As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights."

Take one of those rights — one of those sticks in a bundle of sticks we call property — and you take something that belongs to the owner. Under the Fifth Amendment, compensation is due to that owner.

That is exactly as it should be, exactly what the "taking clause" is for. That is why the framers put that clause in the Constitution — to restrain government or, failing that, to make the public pay for the goods it wants rather than have the costs of those goods fall on individual victims.

Whether it be views, green spaces, historic sites or habitat, we must obtain those goods legitimately. We cannot just take them, and when the framers realized that there would be times when the public would like to achieve public ends by legislating or regulating the taking of property from private parties, it had to be accompanied by just compensations, for only if the victim was made whole would the power have any semblance of justification.

At the community forum on this ordinance, one committee member stated that it wasn't written by the committee but by the consultants. (Look at each meeting's minutes and drafts and see the entitled "consultant's draft."

Denied by another member, the point was proven out when the overwhelming majority of questions from the public were answered by the consultants — not by committee members.

This ordinance does not consider the social (disenfranchised landowners) and economic consequences (is the city prepared to go to court with everyone from whom acres of land is taken?) of enforcing this ordinance, nor does it encourage creative and voluntary means of protecting habitat and riparian areas.

A nonregulatory approach which would foster the cooperation of private property owners — avoiding the involuntary "taking" of private property in the first place — should have been the goal of the committee in the first place.

Why is it that relative newcomers to Montana and out-of-state consultants seem to know what is best for those of us who have been Montanans for generations, and why must they resort to bullying and strong-arm tactics through a "government knows best" attitude, rather than cooperative efforts to "do the right thing?"

As stated at the forum — get involved, stay involved, and let's do something that will be good for all Whitefish residents and property owners.

This ordinance, as presented, is not finished — it is egregious, arbitrary and so complicated that only experts can decipher the language, and it will prove out that the city will need more than the two extra people the committee says will be needed for enforcement.

Tell the Whitefish City Council that this ordinance is not ready for adoption.

Garcy Miesen is a resident of Whitefish.