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Shot clocks for permits make sense

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Tuesday, 30 July 2024

Written by John Hood

North Carolina plays a starring role in the origin story of college basketball’s shot clock.
That is to say, it was the “four corners” offense of the late Dean Smith, longtime coach of the Tar Heels, that ultimately forced the NCAA’s hand back in the 1980s. Although professional basketball had employed a shot clock for decades, leaders of the college sport long resisted it. They thought limiting the number of seconds a team could possess the ball without shooting would make offenses too similar and force them to take poor shots.
The tipping point came in 1982, after UNC won the ACC championship by stalling for nearly seven minutes with a two-point lead over the Virginia Cavaliers. Conference officials gave in and instituted a 30-second shot clock. The entire NCAA adopted it in 1985.
Now, North Carolina is again at the forefront of debate about shot clocks — only in this case, they apply not to players in a game but to officials in regulatory proceedings.
During its 2023 session, the General Assembly passed a law that mandates a 45-day “shot clock” for municipalities to complete their review of permit applications for commercial construction or multifamily residential projects. It provides a 60-day window for “at risk” permits, in which applicants accept full liability should there be subsequent problems with building structures or foundations.
Rep. Jeff Zenger (R-Forsyth), himself a developer, didn’t push for the change to punish municipalities. “I personally think it benefits everybody involved,” he told Triad Business Journal, by giving the private sector more predictability while giving regulators an incentive to prioritize their time. Zenger reported that other state legislatures seem poised to follow North Carolina’s lead.
Also last year, the General Assembly instituted other shot clocks. The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality can consider air-quality permits for major modifications for up to 270 days and for up to 90 days for minor modifications. In water-quality certifications for dredging and pipeline projects, DEQ has a 90-day shot clock for permitting projects for which public hearings are legally required. For projects without a hearing requirement, the clock runs out in 60 days.
This session, many lawmakers want to apply those same time limits to water-quality permits for a new power plant built on the same site as the plant it would replace.
In Catawba and Person counties, for example, Duke Energy wants to swap out coal-fired plants in favor of natural gas. After a 30-day window to ensure the permit application is complete, DEQ would have 90 days to complete reviews of projects requiring a public hearing, and 60 days to review others.
In late June, the measure passed the North Carolina Senate with all Republicans in favor and all but one Democrat opposed. It now awaits action in the House Rules Committee.
There’s nothing magical about these specific numbers. It’s possible that as industries and regulators adapt to the new rules, lawmakers may have to tweak the day counts. But the basic concept of regulatory shot clocks is sound.
It properly balances the legitimate interest in public health and safety with the legitimate interest in ensuring public access to housing, employment, and affordable energy.
The problem extends beyond state and local permitting. Robert Poole, director of transportation policy for the Reason Foundation, argued in a recent paper that environmental litigation impedes critically needed infrastructure projects. “There is growing support among opinion leaders and a large array of business, labor, and public policy organizations,” he wrote, for the proposition that the current process has “gone too far,” ensuring costly “obstacles and delays.”
Among the reforms Poole advocates are, again, shot clocks for filing and adjudicating legal challenges to new construction or renovation projects.
North Carolina isn’t California, which has famously wasted billions of tax dollars on a still-nascent high-speed rail project, in part because of years-long regulatory reviews. But it still takes too long to build things here. Kudos to state lawmakers for doing something about it.

Editor’s Note: John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His latest books, Mountain Folk and Forest Folk, combine epic fantasy with early American history (FolkloreCycle.com).

Joe Biden is no tragic hero

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Tuesday, 23 July 2024

Written by Mary Zahran

It only took ninety minutes for Joe Biden to go from being the leader of the free world to being a political liability many Democrats are now desperate to get rid of. His debate performance against Donald Trump in June was a disaster for him and his party. Appearing pale, glassy-eyed, and confused through the entire debate, Biden reaffirmed for those of us who already knew about his cognitive issues that he is in a state of decline; for those who knew nothing about his physical or mental health, it was a rude awakening.
If Biden has his way, he isn’t going anywhere. He describes his debate performance as a “bad night” that he attributes to a cold and fatigue from recent travels abroad. The irony of this disastrous evening is that it was Biden who wanted to debate Trump and who stipulated the terms of the debate. Perhaps Biden thought he would repeat his State of the Union success and overwhelm his opponent with a show of physical and verbal aggression that would make Trump look weak. If this is what Biden believed would happen, he was wrong.
In an interview just days after the debate, the president doubled down on his vow to stay in the race. Apparently, only God can convince Biden to change his mind, and even that might not be possible. When George Stephanopoulos, the ABC News anchor interviewing Biden, asked him if he would step down, he replied “if the Lord Almighty comes down and tells me to do that, I might do that.” Notice that he said he “might” do that, not that he would do that.
Biden’s refusal to step down, placing him at odds with many members of his party, has presented Americans with an election dilemma unlike any in our history. How this standoff will end is anyone’s guess. Perhaps Biden will change his mind and drop out, but he has a reputation for being extremely stubborn, so that is unlikely. Perhaps the Democrats will find a way to force him out, but then they must select another candidate. If they do not pick Kamala Harris, the current vice president and therefore the obvious choice, they will likely lose voters. Whatever decision they make, they risk losing not only the presidency but also numerous seats in Congress.
It would be very tempting for anyone looking at the problem that the Democrats face to see Biden as a sympathetic figure bravely fighting a battle against his political adversaries for his right to serve a second term. Biden’s physical and cognitive health are tragic, especially for those who have witnessed this kind of deterioration in a loved one, but Biden is no hero.
From the moment Biden was inaugurated, he has implemented policies that have been disastrous not only for America but also for the entire world. In the first few weeks of his administration, he issued executive orders that stopped construction of a border wall and opened up the border; he canceled the Keystone XL pipeline, reducing our fossil fuel production; he extended a pause on student loan payments; he issued an order that transgender female athletes must be allowed to compete against biological women; and he established climate change as an essential part of our foreign policy and national security.
Because of these and other policies issued by Biden, we now have inflation that has created financial hardships for many Americans. We have millions of unvetted illegal immigrants in our country, many of whom are violent criminals. We have wars in Europe and the Middle East. We have world leaders who no longer respect or fear us.
Amid all this, we have a “leader” who truly does not act in the best interests of his country and who feels contempt for half its citizens.
The best thing Biden could do for America would be to acknowledge his medical issues, withdraw from the presidential race, and resign as president. However, he has made it clear he is more interested in holding on to power than he is in serving his country. And that is a great tragedy for all of us.

Shooting should shock the conscience

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Tuesday, 23 July 2024

Written by John Hood

The attempted assassination of Donald Trump, a despicable and indefensible act that came within a whisker of success, should shock the conscience of a seething nation. It should prompt sober reflection, deep introspection, and prayer.
The right people are saying the right things. “There’s no place for this kind of violence in America,” said President Joe Biden, urging us to “unite as one nation to condemn it.” U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis said, “violence can never be tolerated.” It “has no place in our politics or communities,” said Gov. Roy Cooper. “People should be able to have differing opinions without fear of violence or threats,” said Attorney Gen. Josh Stein. “Passions are inflamed on both sides of the aisle,” said Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, “but please, let’s all remember who we are.”
Trump himself posted these words shortly after the shooting. “I want to extend my condolences to the family of the person at the Rally who was killed, and also to the family of another person that was badly injured. It is incredible that such an act can take place in our Country.”
It is. Yet here we are.
I won’t discount the importance of the right people saying the right words at the right time. Rhetoric is as essential to the practice of politics as dexterity is to the practice of surgery, or draftsmanship to architecture. But to be essential is not to be sufficient. Qualities such as discernment and prudence are what distinguish a superior professional from a merely competent one — or, in this case, statesmanship from mere performance.
That your fellow citizen can disagree with you on political matters, large and small, without necessarily being a liar, a villain, or a fool is a proposition you ought to accept because it is true. Even if you doubt its validity, however, you ought to accept it because our system of self-government requires it.
The structure of that system — elections, enumerated rights and powers, separation of powers, checks and balances, the dual sovereignty embedded in federalism — assumes good faith, nonviolent disagreement. If it were already obvious whose ideas were correct, none of this rigamarole would be required.
Moreover, true self-government requires self-restraint. At this writing, we know the name of Trump’s would-be assassin but not enough information to know in detail why he did what he did and how he got close enough to wound our former president and to wound and kill others in the crowd.
Past assassins and would-be assassins had a range of motivations. Some were political extremists. John Wilkes Booth championed the Confederacy. Lee Harvey Oswald was a communist. Leon Czolgosz, who killed William McKinley, was an anarchist. Sirhan Sirhan, who killed senator and presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy, was a foe of Israel. Others had personal grievances. Charles Guiteau, who killed James Garfield, was angry at being passed over for a presidential appointment. Still others — John Hinckley and the men who tried to kill Andrew
Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt — were lunatics.
I’m going to wait for more information before drawing conclusions about this incident. So should our leaders. They should say so, and why. At the same time, our leaders should continue to condemn political violence and advocate political civility. That’s not jumping the gun. That’s trying to make sure no one responds to the events of July 13 by leaping for their own guns.
The attempted assassination of Donald Trump, at once unthinkable but also unsurprising, presents Americans with a momentous choice. It challenges our leaders to guide that decision not only with words but with deeds. In this terrible, providential moment, we can step back from the precipice of disaster. We can heed the words of the first president to be slain by an assassin’s bullet. We can, with malice toward none with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds.
Enough.

Editor’s note: John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His latest books, Mountain Folk and Forest Folk, combine epic fantasy with early American history (FolkloreCycle.com).

Thoughts of a loyal, terrified American

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Tuesday, 23 July 2024

Written by Margaret Dickson

Like most Americans, I have been unsettled at best and profoundly frightened at worst since the last Thursday of June, the night of the Joe Biden-Donald Trump debate. That was the first bookend enclosing what I can only think of as the climatic unraveling of our political process and perhaps of our nation.
The second bookend snapped into place just over 2 weeks later when a young man, a registered Republican, attempted to assassinate former President Trump and successfully killed a volunteer fireman who was shielding his family as friends watched on television. Two other people were seriously injured.
Anyone who thought our political process and our nation’s democracy were chugging along just fine, has been clearly, violently, and perhaps permanently disabused of that notion.
Since the shootings, there has been a steady drumbeat for Americans to “lower the temperature,” “dial back on,” “take a deep breath,” and otherwise back away from our overheated, divisive, and truly ugly political rhetoric. It is almost as if we now care more about our partisan identifications than we do about our nation. I could not agree more, but the question now is whether we have already crossed some invisible but very real line in our politics, whether we have already slipped off the edge and are falling into the abyss.
Like many Americans, very likely some who read this essay, I no longer feel the same way about individuals in my personal orbit, both family and friends, who hold opposing political views to my own. I suspect they feel the same way about me. Some Americans have ended long and close relationships over political differences, something I could not have imagined in my younger years. Historians tell us Americans have not been this divided since the years leading up to our Civil War 150 years ago.
If I were a fairy godmother, I would wave my magic wand and make it possible for Democrats and Republicans to discuss rationally, calmly, and civilly the issues that have driven wedges into our nation’s political heart---our diversifying society, immigration, the availability of weapons like the one that struck the former President. Yelling and name-calling have only made the issues more toxic and the divisions deeper.
Perhaps after the two national political conventions end next month and the Presidential campaign proceeds in earnest, at least some Americans will have come to see that the last two decades of escalating political tension and increasing tolerance of both violent language and violence itself have gravely wounded our country and threaten our national survival.
Up & Coming Weekly publisher Bill Bowman and I have been friends for many years, despite differing political viewpoints. He has never asked me not to write from my heart, and I am sure he has had occasion to defend some position I took to others who disagreed with it.
That said, Bill and I, loyal Americans both, agree on the danger our country is facing if we, Democrats and Republicans, are unwilling or unable to dial back our rhetoric and talk to each other honestly and with less rancor, our children and grandchildren will live in a very different America than he and I — and you — have enjoyed.