The poverty of proceduralism

Rules binding the government can't generate good outcomes

I’m in Maine this week where, like every place in the United States, plenty of NIMBY-type issues are standing in the way of good things.

But rather than complain about this, I thought I’d acknowledge the genuine difficulty here, because sooner or later, everyone comes across an issue where they sympathize with the notion that the world needs more procedural roadblocks and less state capacity to implement its plans.

I don’t have a personal stake in the controversy I’m writing about today — the issue genuinely isn’t my backyard. But all my life, my dad has had a house in a small town in Maine, and my wife and I just bought bought the house next door. About 35 minutes away (not in our backyards!) is a town called Ellsworth, which is the seat of Hancock County. County government isn’t really a big thing in New England, except for judicial purposes. A county has a sheriff and a district attorney, as well as a jail and some judges and a courthouse.

Which is where we get to our current troubles. The existing courthouse is outdated and overcrowded, so the Maine Judicial Branch wants to build a new larger facility. Because they want the new facility to be larger, they say they can’t just use the same location as the existing courthouse, so they bought an 18-acre parcel of land that currently has just one house on it. They plan to raze the house and build a new court building and parking lot.

The neighbors are not happy, primarily on the grounds of traffic.

I don’t care about that (it’s not my backyard), but while reading local news coverage of this controversy to amuse myself by being mad at NIMBYs, I came across a new angle.

Heart of Ellsworth, the advocacy group for Ellsworth’s small-but-mighty downtown, is against the new plan because because moving the courthouse further from downtown is bad for the downtown. That seems compelling to me! I love a good downtown. And it truly does seem bad for a small historic downtown of a county seat to lose one of its local government anchors. How could the Maine judicial branch be so insensitive to the wide range of stakeholders here? Do we need more process? What have I become?

Sympathy for the NIMBYs

It turns out that once you agree with NIMBYs about a desired outcome, their procedural complaints start to sound reasonable, too.