Kevin Roden for Denton City Council

My Suggestions on the Proposed Food Ordinance (and a few reflections on the nature and uses of government regulations)

April 5th, 2012Uncategorized2 comments

The council had the opportunity to hear and comment on the proposed food ordinance at Tuesday’s council meeting.  That discussion lasted nearly 3 hours.  I asked several questions and made several comments during that time, but I have organized by remarks and have provided them to the city staff tasked with writing this ordinance.  I wanted to also make them available to anyone else who may be invested in this issue or just plain nerdy enough to comb through the minutia of complex policy-making.

The proposed ordinance can be found on the city website here.

THESE ARE MY COMMENTS AND SUGGESTIONS RELATING TO THIS ORDINANCE. – click link to left to read.

The city staff will now be tweaking the proposed ordinance to get it closer in line with the direction they received from the council during Tuesday’s discussion.  No time has been set as to when this will come back to council – hopefully sooner than later.

THE NATURE, USES (and abuses) OF REGULATIONS
I would like to take this opportunity to comment on the nature of regulations.  One of the overriding themes of the council discussion on this issue was that this proposed ordinance is too regulatory to meet the policy goals we are hoping to achieve by creating a culture conducive to the ever-changing food-scape in Denton.  Some have even commented on the clear “anti-regulatory stance” I seemed to take during this discussion.  After all, haven’t I been a strong advocate for stronger and greater regulations in other areas of city ordinances, such as the issues surrounding natural gas drilling?  Am I being inconsistent?  Do I lack a coherent political philosophy?

All great questions.  Yet these questions are perhaps the result of our being reared to think about politics solely from the vantage point of a national landscape.  From that point of view, blind allegiance to seemingly consistent positions is rewarded over thoroughly thought-through, coherent political philosophies.  On a national stage, the question is simply: Are you FOR government regulations or AGAINST government regulations?  If you are a conservative, you are supposed to be against regulations at every turn in order to promote a free market economic system.  If you are a liberal, you are taught to be for a robust governmental regulations in order to protect the American people.  National politics is predictably superficial in such things – distinctions aren’t made, nuances aren’t explored, and simply, sound-byte-style party-line statements are the name of the game.  As a result, we tend to take this unhealthy political baggage with us as we approach local levels government.

The truth is, both the liberal and conservative positions on regulation are right – in their proper context. We do need to allow our economy to flourish without the often-times stifling effects of government regulations and bureaucratic obstacles.  We also do need to make sure that the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of our citizens is vigorously protected by the powerful hand of government.  As such, it is up to the wise politician not to be simple-mindedly FOR or AGAINST regulations as a matter of principle, but rather to understand when to properly apply regulations and when to fittingly remove them for the purpose of achieving the common good.

You have a right to know how your council member thinks through such issues.  I apply a simple matrix as a way to BEGIN my thinking about the application of regulations to various issues, industries, or processes in town.  Regulations become useful if they serve one or both of the following goals:

1. Protecting the health, safety, well-being, and possibility for happiness of the citizens.
2. Responding to an overwhelming desire on the part of the citizenry.

It is much easier to state these guiding principles than to apply them to various situations.  After all, most suggested regulations will typically claim to fit into one of these two categories.  The policy-maker must determine whether such claims are justified.  It is the nature of bureaucracy to want to justify itself through its own expansion and is typically too focused on concerns of its own efficiency to meet larger policy goals.  Policy-makers must always be cognizant of this tendency and work to ensure that policy aims are served by governmental rules and regulations and not determined by them (which is far too often the case in modern government).

In the case of mobile food trucks, for instance, I am confident that certain current regulations satisfy the requirements of #1.  Many proposals of the suggested ordinance go further than this and offer at times arbitrary and onerous rules that will only have the effect, not of protecting the health and safety of the citizens, but of making it hard to operate a business.  That is a bad use of regulations.  Combine that with the fact that my analysis of the citizenry suggests to me that the desire referred to in #2 is decidedly in favor of opening the city’s doors to a more robust food truck culture – this makes me want to direct regulations (or remove them as the case may be) toward an “open for business” result on this issue.

These very same principles allow me to be encouraging of very strong ordinances as is relates to an issue such as natural gas drilling in Denton.  I have good scientific reasons to worry that the health, safety, and well-being of our citizens is negatively affected by the presence of such an industry in close proximity to where humans live, work, breathe, drink, and eat.  Hence, #1 inclines me to seek out every available, reasonable regulation to mitigate such concerns.  Additionally, my read of the citizens’ desires described in #2 is this: no one wants a city filled with natural gas rigs, wells, storage tanks, pipe lines, etc.  And this desire can (and should) be warrant for governmental action even if the requirements of #1 are not met – this is important to understand.  If I thought there was overwhelming resistance to food trucks in Denton, I would be inclined to regulate them away regardless of whether there exists any real health or safety issue associated with them.  The people, in this case, don’t want them – and in many cases and many issues, this can be enough justification for a city to regulate toward that end.

Thoughts?  Let me know – kevin.roden@cityofdenton.com