Liens for Violations of Zoning Ordinances: HB863

Virginia House Bill #863 would authorize localities to impose liens on the homes of people who don't comply with zoning ordinances:

http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?121+ful+HB863

Like the overwhelming majority of residents of Scott County, I believe that zoning ordinances constitute unwarranted encroachments on property rights and should be struck down wherever they exist. So it should go without saying that I think this is a very, very bad bill.

There is, of course, a democratic American way to deal with property owners whose use of their property does harm to their neighbors, as distinct from allowing busybodies who don't even live in Virginia a chance to oversee what we do with our property for the purpose of grabbing it. The democratic process for regulating abuses of property rights is to provide for a reasonable number of actual neighbors, say thirty, to sign a petition affirming that someone's junkyard or pigpen is creating a nuisance in the neighborhood. When that many people are willing to interfere, the offender is usually willing to change his or her ways without the formality of a court hearing, and the peace can usually be preserved. Alternatively, if thirty people are not willing to interfere, the complainer is likely to receive a helpful message to the effect that s/he needs to find something useful to do and stop looking at his or her neighbors.

This system has the tremendous advantage that people don't have to wade through masses of legislation to confirm their right to use their property as they see fit. Unfortunately, by failing to enact a petition system that would have been more useful to the residents of Scott County, a few years ago our Board of Supervisors fell prey to people outside the county who were pushing a zoning ordinance system on every county, statewide. The last election clearly showed how the residents of Scott County feel about this nonsense of a zoning ordinance. We now have a new Board of Supervisors with a good clear mandate to abolish anything resembling a zoning ordinance for Scott County, and we can recommend that residents of other counties follow this good example.