As many know, several Southern Tier municipal leaders are considering breaking away from the New York State Association of Towns, partly or perhaps primarily because of the association’s stance on home rule. In May, the state appellate court ruled unanimously that towns can pass bans and moratoria on oil and gas drilling. Home rule means that municipalities, not the state, should decide whether drilling occurs within their borders.
What does it mean if your town doesn’t support home rule?
• It means that your town relinquishes control over heavy industrialization within its borders.
• It means that your town’s board is willing to trash its zoning code if it has one. Zoning is based on a town’s comprehensive plan for the health, safety and welfare of its residents. In fact, the residents are stakeholders in the creation of the comprehensive plan upon which a town’s zoning is based. Therefore ...
• It also means that your town is trashing your agreed-upon comprehensive plan and the vision and values of its people. My town’s comprehensive plan doesn’t call for enriching a few large landowners instead of the welfare of the community at large. Does yours?
• It means that your town trusts the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to protect your health, safety and welfare against an industry that gag-orders and pays its way out of its well leaks, spills, explosions and emissions.
• It means that your soil and water conservation and forestry management personnel can take a permanent holiday because gas companies will call the shots in your town if high-volume horizontal drilling is permitted in New York.
On the other hand, if your comprehensive plan, zoning code, town board and residents agree to transform all zones into heavy industrial, then home rule will allow them to do so. Thus, there is no reason for a town to split off from the State Association of Towns unless it is representing corporations, not people. Who is your board representing?
Wiley is an Owego resident.