RALEIGH — I know that I’m inviting one of those interminable “but America’s not a democracy, it’s a Republic” lectures, but I just can’t stomach the idea that so many North Carolina communities want to build big, costly government projects without public approval.
A couple of years ago, Charlotte voters said no to a new tax-funded arena for what would become the new Charlotte Bobcats NBA franchise. But legally, a successful referendum was required only if local officials planned to issue general-obligation debt, funded by property taxes, to pay off the project. So when the voice of the people spoke loudly against the plan, the Charlotte establishment flared its collective nostrils, twirled its collective pinky, and move ahead with it regardless.
In Raleigh, city and county officials aren’t even bothering with a referendum, binding or nonbinding, to approve their proposed $200 million convention center. They’ll build this latest downtown white elephant by issuing certificates of participation and paying them off with existing taxes on hotel rooms and restaurant meals. From their point of view it’s probably a wise choice, given a recent poll my organization took in Wake County that found significant opposition to the idea once respondents were told how much it would cost. Similarly, in Wilmington the city council also has a convention center on the table, also faces significant taxpayer opposition, and also plans to use COPS instead of voter-approved debt to finance it, which troubles at least one elected official.
I believe in representative government. A pure democracy, one in which citizens directly engage in policymaking, is impractical outside of tiny New England towns and inadvisable anyway. But all governmental structures and all forms of public decisionmaking contain inherent flaws, as do all human institutions. The genius of the American system is not found in a recourse to elections, or even to a constitutional enumeration of rights alone since no list of rights has the force of law unless current governmental officers are willing to respect it.
The aforementioned genius is found in the system of checks and balances. The American Founders, including those who before and after the Revolution helped define our state and local governments, were practical people who understood the risk of entrusting too much power to any one group. Following the lead of classical thinkers such as Aristotle, they saw each governmental ideal as having a practical, problematic counterpart. For example, monarchy offered the prospect of stability and quick action in time of emergencies. But it often deteriorated into tyranny. Aristocracy, Aristotle wrote, could offer a community the welcome guidance of a well-educated group perhaps immune to the vagaries and temptations of the moment, but it often devolved into a self-interested and corrupt oligarchy. And direct popular rule, the ideal of which Aristotle called a polity, could so easily yield to the passions of the mob and become a democracy, a term he did not use as praise.
Taking the concept of checks and balances to the local-government context, I would argue that while most city and county decisions should be made by elected representatives — it would be absurd to ask hundreds of thousands of Wake or Mecklenburg citizens to approve annual budgets, for example — there should be exceptions. More to the point, large issuances of public debt, regardless of whether they are in the form of bonds or COPs, to build facilities or infrastructure outside of a locality’s core functions should be subjected to voter approval.
The reason isn’t too hard to grasp. Unlike an annual spending item, a decision to build a sports arena, convention center, or rail-transit line will obligate taxpayers and possibly their descendants to finance the project for many years. In most cases, elected officials making the decision will be gone from office long before the bill is fully paid, but the interest groups lobbying for the project will enjoy the long-term benefits. The situation sets up perverse incentives.
I usually find myself arguing against asking the public to vote on things. I think North Carolina’s state government would function a lot better, for example, if we didn’t elect so many members to the Council of State. But when the issue involves hundreds of millions of dollars, and sometimes billions of dollars, and involves government in what is essentially private enterprise, I tend to think that our Republic would benefit from a little direct democracy.
Or polity, if you prefer.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.