# Permit Tyranny



## conarb

With all the press the Supreme Court got this week on the gay rights, voting, and affirmative action decisions, few have noticed a hopefully blockbuster decision for builders/developers.



			
				\ said:
			
		

> “The ruling is a powerful victory for everybody’s constitutional property rights, from coast to coast,” Beard continued. “The Koontz family was challenging permit demands that were wildly excessive and had no connection to their land use proposal. Today, the court recognized that the Koontz family was the victim of an unconstitutional taking. The court’s message is clear: Government can’t turn the land use permitting process into an extortion machine.“The ruling underscores that homeowners and other property owners who seek permits to make reasonable use of their property cannot be forced to surrender their rights,” Beard stated. “Regulators can’t hold permit applicants hostage with unjustified demands for land or other concessions — including, as in this case, unjustified demands for money.
> 
> “The court has recognized that money is a form of property, and the Constitution prohibits grabbing money from property owners the same way it prohibits grabbing land without compensation,” Beard said.
> 
> “The Koontz family sought permission to develop a few acres in Central Florida, and they were told they must spend up to $150,000 to improve the government’s property, miles away from the Koontz family’s land,” Beard explained. “This demand was far in excess of any impact that their land use proposal would create. They fought this injustice in the courts for nearly two decades, and today they have won a landmark decision, for themselves and all property owners. Their victory protects all permit applicants from government extortion. Everyone who values constitutional property rights owes the Koontz family a debt of gratitude for this historic victory.”¹


 We have to pay all kinds of mitigation fees to permit a simple house, to subdivide property we have to deed property to  government agencies for parks or other public uses, or convert large areas of land to unusable greenbelts.  The court has ruled that there must be a reasonable connection to our usage, the government can't use the permit process to extort money from us.  Here in California we have an affordable housing law, when even permitting a simple house we have to pay many thousands of dollars in fees to support affordable housing, I see no nexus between a man permitting a new home and the provision of homes for the poor, which is really integrating the poor into wealthy communities.

Hopefully this case can be used as a precedent to stop government agencies from using the permit process to extort money from us for the "privilege" of building, a fellow contractor recently paid a $67,000 affordable housing fee to permit a $1 million house remodel.

¹ Release - PLF statement on Koontz property rights victory at the Supreme Court - Pacific Legal Foundation


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## ICE

Oh my gosh, they have been paying lawyers for twenty years.


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## jpranch

Seen this before with a federal twist / land grab on Millers Bend on the Potomac just below Harper's ferry West Virginia. U.S. department (small d) of the interior. They have no shame.


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## pyrguy

Was the 67000 just for affordable  housing??


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## conarb

pyrguy said:
			
		

> Was the 67000 just for affordable  housing??


Yes, the City of Lafayette assesses their affordable housing fee to remodels as well as new construction, I didn't pay it on my "remodel" in Santa Clara County since they don't access the fee against remodels there.  Every AHJ has different rules, the law doesn't require the AHJs to provide the affordable housing, but they do require them to make provision for it, zoning-wise etc.  There are affordable housing activist groups that are serially litigating against the cities and counties that have not provided for the housing.

  Another dastardly thing they do in the way they fund the mandate is since we have a constitutional amendment barring AHJs from charging mare than the cost of delivery of services (otherwise it's a tax requiring a 2/3 vote of the electorate), since the affordable housing mandate has no funding, most cities have included their affordable housing departments into their building departments, the cost of complying with the mandate becomes all part and parcel of the operating expenses of the building department, thereby doing an end run around the fee for services constitutional mandate.  The result is that I come into the building department with rolls of plans, sign in to pay all these fees, but signed in ahead of me are several poor people waiting to get approved for affordable housing,  I have to wait in line with them, Karl Marx would be proud.


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## ICE

conarb said:
			
		

> poor people ...................  I have to wait in line with them


That's a damned shame.


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## conarb

ICE said:
			
		

> That's a damned shame.


Since the building department is legally limited to collecting fees for services rendered I'm paying the costs of the salaries and benefits of the employees, they are taking that money, so the fees go up and:



			
				Karl Marx said:
			
		

> *"Jeder nach seinen Fähigkeiten, jedem nach seinen Bedürfnissen!"*.


Building departments are becoming tools of social engineering.


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## Uncle Bob

Conarb,  I hear ya, loud and clear.  The state of Oklahoma requires all electrical, mechanical and plumbing contractors, journeymen, and apprentices to be licensed by the state.  Here is where the extortion comes in; municipalities also require these same state licensed individuals to show their state licenses and obtain a municipal license for each person also.  Working in the area of the Oklahoma City metroplex; these guys could be carrying up to 14 licenses.  That is extortion in my opinion.  I'm pushing for our community to simply require them to register their state license without a fee.  That reminds me; I need to update my resume.        Uncle Bob


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## conarb

Uncle Bob said:
			
		

> Working in the area of the Oklahoma City metroplex;  these guys could be carrying up to 14 licenses.  That is extortion in my  opinion.


Uncle Bob:

I've got an interesting story on that, back in the 50s all cities around here required all contractors to put city decals on their windows so the city could hire employees to drive down streets and leave citations on the windows of trucks parked on the streets without city business license stickers.  Around here cities all run together so contractors working in multiple cities were required to have multiple stickers on their windows.  Finally in a case on the San Francisco Peninsula a painting contractor was cited in the morning for not having the city sticker on his window (even though he had a business license in that city), on the way home from work on the freeway he was pulled over by the Highway Patrol and issued a citation for having too many decals on his windows blocking his vision.  He spent a lot of money in  legal fees getting the two tickets consolidated and fighting the tickets through the court's appeals system  until he got a higher court ruling that the cities' requirements were illegal, now nobody has to have city decals on their windows.

Before that decision I was a young carpenter putting an addition on the back of a home in Albany, the city building inspector was also the city dog catcher so he would drive up in his van full of barking dogs to make his inspections, becasue I didn't have a sticker on my Ford Ranchero (also my family car) he literally ordered me into his dog catchers' van to take me in to the police station, I pleaded with him to allow me to call my employer and get the city license number and he finally relented so I didn't go to jail.  The crazy thing here is  that the city wouldn't have issued the permit in the first place if they didn't have a city license, so the issue was all over the  lack of a decal on my car window.  I do have to agree though that combining the positions of building inspector and dog catcher was a good cost saving idea, good for contractors too since the inspector could never surprise you since you could hear the dogs barking a block away as they drove up.


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## David Henderson

Boy conarb am I glad Berkeley does our dog catching now, don't like barking dogs


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## rktect 1

Thank God I only visit california.


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## JPohling

Yeah,  because nothing unusual takes place in Illinois!  Ha


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## mark handler

rktect 1 said:
			
		

> Thank God I only visit california.


The original post was Florida,  not California

Maybe you can explain the Chicago building department,  greasing of the palms....


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## rktect 1

I want to move out of Illinois.

I cant wait to retire.


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## mark handler

rktect 1 said:
			
		

> I want to move out of Illinois. I cant wait to retire.


California....?


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## rktect 1

mark handler said:
			
		

> California....?


Out of the fire and into the frying pan?


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## Mark K

California is where you get to decide if you want snow in the winter.  Little to no rain in the summer.

We also have a balanced state budget and are not used to having politicians convicted of crimes.

We do not have tornados and while we do have earthquakes we do make an attempt to design for them as opposed to some places that do not design for tornados.

On the other hand maybe we should encourage the mistaken beliefs since too many people already want to live here.


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## mark handler

Mark K said:
			
		

> California is where you get to decide if you want snow in the winter.  Little to no rain in the summer.We also have a balanced state budget and are not used to having politicians convicted of crimes.
> 
> We do not have tornados and while we do have earthquakes we do make an attempt to design for them as opposed to some places that do not design for tornados.
> 
> On the other hand maybe we should encourage the mistaken beliefs since too many people already want to live here.


California is where you surf in the morning and snow ski in the afternoon, or visa versa......Nowhere is without cost


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## conarb

David Henderson said:
			
		

> Boy conarb am I glad Berkeley does our dog catching now, don't like barking dogs


David:

I'm trying to recall the name of the Dog Catcher/Building Inspector, he was quite well known.  Thinking about I do recall the name of your mayor, her name was Kathy Zahn, she was famous for wearing long billowy dresses and large fancy hats, she bought everything at Union Square, on one shopping trip a pigeon crapped on her hat and she sued the City of San Francisco for not controlling their pigeons.

My first job out of college was as a foreman on a project on Codornices Village installing asbestos siding on the University of California married students' housing project, I thought it appropriate that a Stanford guy would cover Cal dormitories with asbestos, it was specified by the Cal engineers, so we see what they knew then, and assume that they don't know much more now.

You had a, I believe, City Manager/CBO in the 60s who took over from the dog catcher/building inspector of the 50s, I'm still trying to think of his name, we all called him "The Bald Eagle" since he was a bald as a billiard ball.  Albany approved a house for me on a steep site on the west side of Albany Hill overlooking Golden Gate Fields, when it came to the final he decided that my driveway was too steep, I argued that he had approved it at that grade, he owned a large/long Chrysler so he loaded it up with three other big guys and me,  then drove up and down the driveway to see if the car would scrape, his bumper did scrape backing down onto the street, but he finally relented and signed me off since I argued that it was his fault for not catching in on the architect's plans at plan check.


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## ICE

conarb said:
			
		

> but he finally relented and signed me off since I argued that it was his fault for not catching in on the architect's plans at plan check.


Depending on your point of view, he was still the smartest one in the room.


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## Rider Rick

ICE said:
			
		

> Depending on your point of view, he was still the smartest one in the room.


Why is that? Tiger


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## ICE

The architect designed it....the contractor built it....the inspector caught the mistake


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## mark handler

ICE said:
			
		

> The architect designed it....the contractor built it....the inspector caught the mistake


Planchecker missed it....


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## MASSDRIVER

ICE said:
			
		

> The architect designed it....the contractor built it....the inspector caught the mistake


Not really. No determination if there WAS a mistake, or if it was too steep. Inspector, according to story so far, just said it was too steep.

Brent


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## conarb

> Not really. No determination if there WAS a mistake, or if it was too  steep. Inspector, according to story so far, just said it was too steep.  Brent


Albany (at the time) had a template at it's permit counter with cut-out cars that you pushed over the plan to check not only grade percentage and radii for bumper and undercarriage scraping.  I never saw it until the Bald Eagle called me on it at final, but a problem was that the cut-out cars were for ¼" scale plans and the driveway was on the surveyor's plot plan at 1" = 10', probably why the plan checker didn't use it.

David. do you still have that template?

This was about 46 years ago, the "plan checker" was a gal at the counter, probably the Bald Eagle's secretary,  in any jurisdiction at that time I could permit a single family home over the counter as long as I had the plans drawn by an architect and the plans sealed by an engineer.  It was my argument that the approval constituted acceptance of the plans submitted.


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## ICE

MASSDRIVER said:
			
		

> Not really. No determination if there WAS a mistake, or if it was too steep. Inspector, according to story so far, just said it was too steep. Brent


The bumper dragging in the street doesn't do it for you?


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## conarb

> The bumper dragging in the street doesn't do it for you?


He could not quote a code section, just said it was his policy.  Interestingly nobody makes those 60s 19' land yachts anymore so everything turned out alright.


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## MASSDRIVER

ICE said:
			
		

> The bumper dragging in the street doesn't do it for you?


Not to be snide, but hell no. I could just counter with a jeep. Driveway could be 45 degrees and pass the dumb bumper drag test.

Or get a bagged 66 impala and drop it to the frame and NO driveway would pass.

I never heard of the six-meatheads-in-a-Buick standard.

Now if the city had an approach/departure standard that was exceeded, then it would not be to code.

Brent.


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## ICE

Can't I poke conarb in peace?


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## Mark K

Any time an inspector says it is his policy and cannot provide a code provision he is exceeding his authority.

I would expect there to be formal standards for public streets but you are talking about a private road.  Maybe this is one of the things that are not addressed in the code and as a result whether it is satisfactory or not is up to the owner and his contractor.


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