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.
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