In October the City of Albuquerque Council on a bipartisan 7-2 vote rejected an initiative that would have placed the City on record as supporting rent control. We applauded the move at the time.
But, in “progressive” and poorly governed New Mexico no bad idea is ever totally dead. So, pro-rent control activists seem to have convinced powerful Democrat State Senator Linda Lopez to introduce legislation that would eliminate the State’s ban on the practice.
Some supporters claim this is all about “local control,” but the reality is that the Legislature makes economic policies that cities must adhere to all the time, including 2019 legislation that was adopted to prevent local governments from adopting “Right to Work” laws.
The truth is rent control won’t solve the problem of rising rents. Only expanding the housing supply (with a side of reducing inflation) will bring housing/rent prices down. But, it’s easier for the economically-illiterate to simply demand a legislative “fix.”
It seems government at all levels keeps expanding it’s reach over our lives. In other words, the people we elect to govern have the power to expand their power. Are there not any defined limitations to this?
The “government” is not necessarily behind many of these power grabs. A well-entrenched, and often clandestine bureaucracy, enacts regulations based on sometimes vaguely defined laws. These bureaucrats far outnumber the number of legislators, whose time in office is transitory when compared with the bureaucracy’s tenure, and who act statewide on statutes which may have been crafted for metropolitan areas.
Witness a septic system rule requiring a minimum of an acre for a leach field. This rule was instituted to require small towns and village homeowners to connect to a municipal sewage system.
I live in a very rural area on a half acre lot. If my system had not been ’grandfathered’ (being installed in 1996) I would have been required to have a pump out system. Never mind that the water obtained from the septic system ultimately serves to replenish groundwater.