Why do natural disasters often bring out the best in people...

and the worst in local governments?

Another dispatch from the post-Hurricane Irma mess comes from Green Cove Springs, Florida.  According to Clay Today, city officials rousted a food truck driver who wanted to provide food including FREE meals for anyone in a utility vehicle.

Why?  Someone apparently complained and Mayor Mitch Timberlake agreed saying that the food truck operator should have asked the City first.

In response, I cannot improve on the account artfully provided by Clay Today:

"Had Roundtree decided to press his case at City Hall, he would have been greeted with a sign that read: “Due to Hurricane Irma, City Hall offices and services will re-open on Thursday, Sept. 14, 2017.”

Local attorney John Whiteman happened to take a photograph of the sign on the glass door, fully reflecting the blue skies-sunshiny day. “Not the best message because it gives the impression that no one's working when I'm certain that wasn't true,” Whiteman said, speculating that the city’s administrative leaders were ensconced in the security of the police station for the duration of the emergency, thus avoiding having to communicate with the general public about things such as food truck permits."

In the aftermath of a major storm in a community where the local McDonald's ran out of food at 2 p.m., city officials found the time to dispatch law enforcement to give the bum's rush to a small business meeting a community need.  I can only imagine what might have happened to an enterprising 10-year-old who opened a lemonade stand.  I presume nothing less than the SWAT team in full tactical gear would have sufficed to protect the interests of the local beverage industry.

A lemonade stand by any other name...

According to News &7 Miami, code enforcement officers in Miami-Dade County began issuing warning citations to property owners only hours after Hurricane Irma passed.

The report quotes Celso Perez saying:

“At the time this officer was out here, we didn’t have power, we didn’t have food, we didn’t have ice. He is crazy, ridiculous. The mayor said that the county would help us recover from the storm and were there to help us. Before the county picks up the debris, the code enforcement guy will beat them to it and some for having my fence down, write me a ticket or something. I’m mad, very upset about this.”

Perez' response is not surprising or unusual.  It is the same reaction one sees when local authorities declare war on a lemonade stand.  The issue became pervasive enough to wind up on the pages of the National Review.

What is it that causes local government officials to apparently lose any semblance of common sense?  Is it as simple as NR's Kevin D. Williamson concluding, "We are ruled by power-mad buffoons."

Having known many well-intended (though occasionally ham-handed) enforcement officials, I don't think this is the Madness of King George.  Part of the problem is incentives.  Success in code enforcement is normally measured by the metric of "fixing problems."  This incentivizes seeing things as problems.

There are time when an incentive is financial.  In Delaware, local jurisdictions keep the money from traffic citations.  In Maryland, the fines are remitted to the state government.  Where do you think it is more likely to be let off with warning?  Incentives matter.  Always.

Incentives also can be cultural.  Harkening back to the Miami-Dade example, what do code enforcement officers do?  They enforce codes.  What if the job title was changed to "Regulation Navigators"?  What if building inspectors became construction facilitators?  What if the focus shifted from enforcing a set of rules towards helping residents accomplish goals within a structure?

Until we figure this out, we'll continue to see lemonade stands shut down by overzealous officials.  And with every heartbroken four-year-old, the public trust in local government will further diminish.

From Judge Learned Hand's "Spirit of Liberty" speech

"I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws, and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there, it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it."