In a self-governing society, no one—not even the police—is above the law. Unfortunately, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department has a bad habit of disregarding government transparency laws. Now, in an effort to hold the police accountable, the Goldwater Institute is suing the department for knowingly stonewalling a property owner’s request for records he’s legally entitled to receive.
The case began in April when a St. Louis property owner requested police records to better understand why officers responded to a bogus complaint at his short-term rental. Under Missouri law, the police department had three days to act on the request and 30 days to either provide the records or file a motion in court asking for permission to redact or withhold them. The department didn’t do either of those things. In fact, it took more than four months—and a warning from the Goldwater Institute—before it produced any records at all. This comes after Goldwater won a trial court victory against the department earlier this year for illegally withholding records from a local newspaper.
Government institutions like the St. Louis police department work for the people. The Goldwater Institute will continue fighting in Missouri and around the nation whenever government agencies try to keep the public in the dark about their operations.
Read more here.
Montana has a tradition of valuing space, independence, and the right of property owners to decide what happens on their own land. But as the Goldwater Institute’s Dave Roland argues in a new op-ed, a Missoula County data center moratorium that commissioners recently imposed threatens to turn that tradition on its head.
Over the summer, Missoula commissioners imposed a one-year moratorium on new or expanded data centers. Writing in the Missoulian newspaper, Roland—Goldwater’s Director of Allied Litigation—argues that a blanket ban on data centers is the wrong answer to concerns residents have about noise and resources. Data centers are vital infrastructure for the modern age that bolster local economies. Halting them, even temporarily, freezes private investment and restricts property rights. “Above all,” Roland writes, “Missoula County should prioritize protecting the right of property owners to make the most profitable use of their property that does not cause a nuisance to their neighbors.”
Rather than ban an entire category of development, Missoula should “set reasonable limits on noise, light, and other effects that might spill beyond a property line,” Roland writes.
As the Goldwater Institute continues to remind leaders around the country, data center moratoriums won’t stop the future from arriving—they’ll only ensure that it happens somewhere else.
Read more here.
When voters in Pima County, Ariz., head to the polls next month, government leaders are urging them to back Proposition 425, a measure they’re trying to pass off as nothing more than a minor adjustment to their spending cap. It’s nothing of the sort. As Goldwater Institute Senior Attorney Scott Day Freeman points out, that ballot measure would increase the county’s spending cap by $610 million—a whopping 75% jump over the current limit.
The county’s spending cap dates to 1980, when Arizona voters approved a constitutional limit on how much counties may spend each year from local revenues. The cap grows automatically with population and inflation, meaning that the county’s $94 million spending cap in fiscal 1979-80 is now $817 million. But that’s not enough for Pima County leaders. The Prop 425 ballot language talks of a $70 million spending cap adjustment, but that’s a bump to the 1979-80 base budget the cap is based on—a “yes” vote will actually increase the cap by $610 million!
Spending caps are one of the few tools taxpayers have to ensure local governments live within their means—a county that collects more in taxes than it’s legally allowed to spend can cut tax rates or retire debt, not just beg for permission to spend more. Government leaders should be straight with voters. The Goldwater Institute will continue to expose them when they aren’t.
Read more here.
