The Failure of Zoning Regulations: Comparing Allegany County, Maryland to Mineral County, West Virginia

 

A tale of two counties.  Since 2005, Mineral County, West Virginia has increased its private sector workforce by over 1/5.  Its neighbor to the north, Allegany County, Maryland, with much better access to the national transportation infrastructure, has shed over three thousand jobs.

F. A. Hayek, an Austrian economist, published his most important work in the years after World War II.  In his book Road to Serfdom, he demonstrated how increasing economic planning stifles economic growth and undermines freedom.  Economic statistics in these neighboring counties support his theory.

Look up Allegany County Maryland Zoning Law.  Google takes the user straight to a long set of rules and definitions.  The reader can also see a zoning map.  A glance at Mineral brings up a You Tube video of a planning commission session from four years ago.  Zoning has been brought up in Mineral time and time again.  The failure to enact zoning laws helped to lead to relatively robust improvements in employment even as the national economy tanked.

Meanwhile Allegany County experienced dismal drops in its economic performance.  Manufacturing jobs, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, dropped from 4,322 in 2005 to just under 2,500 in 2010.  The total payroll declined almost as significantly.  The private sector workforce declined by over 3,000.

This came despite the development of multiple prison complexes near Cumberland, which also disproves the idea that government spending promotes economic growth in the private sector.

Hayek argued that every government is seduced by the idea of planning.  Advocates argue that planning leads to more productive and desirable growth, if government can only find the right experts to guide it.  History shows that economic planners often fail, at least when it comes to sparking private sector growth.

Another problem with economic planning is that it reduces the role of democracy in decision-making.  Experts get appointed to powerful posts, or are part of unelected bodies like planning commissions.  They make decisions on who gets approved, what gets built, and how things get done.  The more rigorous the rules, the more difficult the burden on the private sector to build and develop.  Hayek points out that bureaucrats with more and more power have more opportunity to act arbitrarily.  In other words, tick off the bureaucrat and face obstacles to permits and heavy fines. 

Fauquier County, Virginia last month was the scene of zoning run amok.  Its Byzantine permit ordinances were used to fine a family run winery for holding a relative’s birthday party on site.  The festivities were for an eight year old.  A power mad bureaucrat enforced economic tyranny in the Commonwealth of Jefferson.

Government proves daily that, whether by abusive bureaucrats or incompetence, that it cannot be trusted to do well or right except under voter oversight.  Allegany County’s economic decline relative to Mineral’s, even with substantial advantages, demonstrates the veracity of Hayek’s ideas on planning.