Teaching local WUM groups how to revise their county's land use plan is a favorite theme of the Federal Land Use Conferences. Billing this strategy of revising county plans as the Home Rule Movement, WUM groups are taught to model certain land use ordinances after some ordinances which were originally passed in Catron County, New Mexico. The Catron County ordinances were a product of a great deal of effort by some of the WUM's leading legal ideologists, including attorney Karen Budd. These Home Rule county ordinances are designed to attempt to relieve county residents from having to comply with Federal and State environmental laws. Oftentimes, these Home Rule ordinances go so far as to prescribe criminal penalties for any State or Federal official who attempts to enforce State or Federal laws within the county.
The typical WUM strategy for enacting these Home Rule ordinances proceeds as follows: a local WUM group will meet for a period of time, occasionally bringing in certain Home Rule "specialists" like Karen Budd, until the group comes up with the language it wants for its Home Rule ordinances. Then the group will present the proposed ordinances to the county supervisors or county commissioners in the form of a petition for redress of grievance. Next, signatures of county residents will be gathered on petitions asking the county officials to adopt the Home Rule package of ordinances. Once the required number of signatures are gathered, the county officials will be asked to vote on adopting the Home Rule package.
According to WUM literature, the Home Rule Movement has spread to over 200 counties in the U.S., including at least 19 counties in the State of California. We do not have a complete list of all the counties in California where there is Home Rule activity, but so far we know it is in Trinity, Siskiyou, Colusa, Del Norte, Humboldt, Lassen and Modoc. How can people write a county ordinance and believe that it would supersede State or Federal law? It would be instructive to take a closer look at one of these Home Rule packages.
Let us examine a Home Rule package that was presented to the County Board of Supervisors on February 16th of this year by WUM champion and Humboldt County Supervisor Anna "Chainsaw" Sparks. The Public Agenda Item Transmittal sheet presented to the Humboldt Supervisors says that the Home Rule County Movement is, "a procedure for rural counties to ease the burden of Federal and State Government decisions made at an individual county's expense." The idea that counties are somehow separate from, and also the victims of, Federal and State government is a theme that runs through much of the WUM's literature as well as through this petition and proposed interim land use plan. The anti-government sentiment, or at least the sentiment against State and Federal levels of government, are so strong in WUM ideology that one expects to see calls for counties to secede from the union somewhere within. The word "secede", however, never appears. Instead, the language used implies that it is a county citizen's right and sacred duty as an American to see that counties rebel against Federal and State authority.
The Petition for Redress of Grievance presented to the Humboldt Supervisors begins, "Whereas: The citizens of Humboldt County, State of California, endorse the protections of private property and private property rights as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and by the Civil Rights Act, and desire to ensure that these protections and rights are afforded to the citizens of Humboldt County . . ." The concept of private property is another favorite topic of the WUM. According to WUM reasoning, civil rights are the same thing as property rights. Unfortunately, the petition does not attempt to explain how the people of Humboldt are being denied their property and/or civil rights. Nor does the petition attempt to explain why the people of Humboldt could not use the ordinary channels of law, like any other citizens, if their property and/or civil rights were being violated.
Nonetheless, the petition goes on to say, " . . . The citizens of Humboldt County, State of California, do hereby request the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors to adopt an emergency Ordinance of Regulation to protect the public peace, general welfare, health and safety of the citizens of Humboldt County from violations of their Constitutional and civil rights . . ." This section of the petition seems to imply that the people of Humboldt, without an emergency action by the Board, are so oppressed that they are hardly able to restrain themselves from launching into some sort of bloody civil war. Of course, as the last MEC Newsletter detailed, the WUM already considers itself to be in the thick of World War III. So, perhaps we should not be surprised to see veiled threats of violence in this WUM petition to the County Supervisors.
The Petition for Redress of Grievance concludes with a plea for the Supervisors to, "adopt the Interim Land Management Plan as presented and to then implement that plan to protect and defend the citizens of Humboldt County by proper and timely ordinances" and also a plea for the Supervisors to use the 1988 Presidential Executive Order 12630, "as the guidelines to evaluate a possible 'takings' of property rights and civil rights of the citizens of Humboldt County." Executive Order 12630 was issued by President Ronald Reagan to warn that certain federal regulations could result in a taking of private property rights and that persons suffering from such a taking should be fairly compensated for their losses by the government. A similar Executive Order has since been issued by the Governor for the State of California.
In fact, even before the executive orders, the law required that people be fairly compensated for any takings of property by the government. What is it then, that the people of Humboldt need to be protected and defended against? The language of this petition would imply that the people of Humboldt need to be protected and defended from having to comply at all with any State or Federal regulation with which they disagree. An examination of the proposed ordinances that accompany the petition and the Interim Land Management Plan bears out this suspicion.
The proposed ordinances, if approved by the County Supervisors, would adopt: the National Forest Management Act (NFMA), the Public Rangelands Improvement Act (PRIA), the Civil Rights Act (CRA), the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, Presidential Executive Order 12630 and the resultant Attorney General's Guidelines For The Evaluation Of Risk And Avoidance Of Unanticipated Takings all as local ordinances. This may be a laudable exercise in citizenship. However, assuming that Humboldt County is already a part of the United States of America, one must wonder why the people of Humboldt are not already governed by these acts, order and guidelines. The answer, of course, is that they are.
The real purpose, then, behind adopting federal laws as local laws is that the WUM sees this as a way to then argue that Humboldt is now an equal partner with the Federal Government in the administration, interpretation and enforcement of these laws. In fact, as far as the WUM is concerned, Humboldt would become the lead agency and would have the power to arrest and imprison any federal official who attempted to act merely on Federal authority alone. All of the ordinances provide for monetary fines and imprisonment of federal officials who attempt to do their jobs without County approval.
Along with the proposed ordinances is a proposed Interim Land Management Plan. The management plan relies on the proposed ordinances and also relies on the concept of "Custom and Culture" for its impetus. In Federal Law, the concept of Custom and Culture generally means that if people in a certain territory were engaged in specific behaviors that could be described as customary and cultural before the territory became a State, then the people's right to continue to engage in their former customary and cultural practices is protected by law. These proposed Home Rule packages stretch the Customs and Culture protections to the furthest imaginable limit. The WUM proponents say that if it was their practice to degrade, deplete and destroy their (and our) environment before the territory became a state, then it is their right to continue to do so now. Indeed, one must seriously wonder if there was ever a practicing band of cannibals in Humboldt County who might seek the protection of Custom and Culture laws.
While attorneys across the nation are presently preparing for a very long and stormy confrontation over what these Home Rule packages really mean legally, it is clear what they mean to the WUM adherents. To them, these Home Rule packages provide a way for local landowners to have absolute say over land use within a county's boundaries. Not just say over the use of their own lands, mind you, but say over the use of the public (State and Federal) lands as well. Gone is the concept that public lands belong to all of us. Gone also is the concept of Public Trust Rights. Under the Home Rule package, the WUM groups believe that all property within county lines will be governed according to private property rights only.
Hence, the landowners want complete power over all land disposition, water use and transfer, economic development, agricultural practices, tree cutting, access, transportation, fishing, archeological sites, mineral extraction and any other conceivable land use or concern that might occur within the county limits. These landowners do not care to answer to a Federal Government that wants to enforce laws about endangered species, pollution limits or sustained yield logging. These landowners do not care to answer to the American people who are convinced that the water, air and the health of the earth's ecosystems are public resources upon which we, and all future generations, depend. There is, in fact, a great deal about modern-day America that these WUM groups do not like. It remains to be seen whether most Americans will agree with them, or not.
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 2004
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited