The Elephant In The Room

One of the major goals of libertarianism is, in my view, to educate people on the real nature of government. Especially, that government derives its power from the use of force, the ability to kill and imprison people. This isn't a particularly profound insight, nor is it terribly controversial. Most anyone who's put a few moments of thought into the subject would likely come to the same conclusion. To my experience few people have put even that small effort into their philosophical assessment.

That government is based on force, (or violence, or coercion if you rather) isn't a condemnation of the idea of having government. Rather, it's an admonition to use government judiciously and wisely, instead of for frivolous and arbitrary purposes. Case in point:

Megan Forbes cooled her heels in jail for a few hours Sunday, long enough for her to rue installing the wrong kind of garage door behind her historic home and then failing to answer a summons on the municipal violation.

The head of Boulder's Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board is furious that Forbes was hauled to jail for an infraction so minor, but Forbes herself is taking it in stride.

"It's a done deal," Forbes, a dietitian, said Thursday. "I'd rather just leave it alone."

On Wednesday, she told the Daily Camera, "It was a lesson learned, for sure. The law's the law and you have to make sure you're doing everything right."

But Tim Plass, chief of the landmarks preservation board, said he "was absolutely shocked" by the arrest.

"For someone like Meg to get hauled off on a Sunday morning as she is going to church is unacceptable," he said.

"It's a lack of communication between various parts of the city government. It could have been averted."

City officials, too, regret that such a minor miscue landed Forbes in jail, but none seems to have a surefire solution to ensure it won't happen again.

Ah, yes, we all agree it's wrong to put people in jail for having the wrong kind of garage door. But the landmarks board and other city entities have authority only via their ability to do that sort of thing. Otherwise homeowners could ignore the board and city regulations and remodel their houses as they wish.

It seems these city functionaries don't understand their own power, as each quoted in the article strains to point out how they don't want to send people in jail -

Assistant City Attorney Janet Michels noted that Forbes didn't go to jail because she installed the wrong kind of door but because she failed to appear in court to explain why she didn't answer a summons issued by the preservation board.

She easily could have forestalled her arrest by asking the court to suspend the warrant while she worked out a compromise with the design board, Michels said.

Julie Brooks, spokeswoman for the Boulder police, said the officer who arrested Forbes on Sunday had not been instructed to get tough on garage door scofflaws.

"We do keep a list of warrants," Brooks said. "And when officers have time, they do look up warrants in their districts . . . and go out" and ring doorbells.

"If it's a warrant, anybody can land in jail," she said. "The warrant itself says the officer is commanded to take the person into custody."

Ironically, while Forbes apparently ignored the summons, she did meet with the preservation board's design team and had worked out a compromise, agreeing to install a garage door that was more in tune with the design sense of the neighborhood.

"There's never an intent to put someone in jail over something like this," said Chris Meschuk, historic preservation planner for the city.

Nancy Kornblum, a member of the design review committee, said she hopes "there's a way to find another form of penalty - a civil penalty rather than a criminal penalty."

Typically, a summons is issued "only after a homeowner's repeated failure to comply," Kornblum added.

Of course civil penalties are collected through force, as well as criminal ones. I suppose it's true that each of these bureaucrats doesn't actually want to see homeowners jailed. That's a lot of bother and expense for the city, plus it makes the city employees look rather monstrous. But if they have real objections to putting people in jail they should stop issuing citations. I guess it would be tough to give up that power.