The upcoming legislative Texas legislative session promises to include another battle between the state and local governments. Lawmakers have already introduced or plan to introduce bills to reign in local ordinances regarding mandated sick pay, regulations on short-term rentals, and local increases in property taxes.
Municipal governments claim that such actions on the part of the state government limit their ability to deal with local issues and implement the “will of the people.” This is certainly true, but it evades the real issue. The only proper purpose of government is the protection of individual rights, including property rights. When a local government violates those rights, it is proper for the state government to intervene, just as it is proper for the federal government to prohibit state actions that violate rights.
Unfortunately, Texas legislators are taking a piece-meal approach to this issue. They wait until a local government enacts a rights-violating ordinance and then respond with a bill that prohibits such actions. But municipalities will enact such laws long before state legislators can respond. As a result, state legislators are attempting to stamp out smoldering embers while a forest fire rages around them.
Legislators could end this conflict once and for all. All that is required is a principled approach—prohibiting local governments from enacting any ordinance that violates property rights.
Of course, if state lawmakers passed such a bill, integrity would demand that they practice on the state level what they demand on the local level. This would mean repealing laws that protect beer distributors and automobile dealerships from competition, laws that grant eminent domain powers to private companies, and a whole host of other state laws.
Sadly, this is unlikely to occur.