The Libertarians

Armstrong Williams, take note:

Clint Bolick has this to say in his capacity as the Goldwater Institute’s director of the Center for Constitutional Litigation ™:

Chandler recently raised its development impact fees nearly 50 percent, adding nearly $6,000 to the price of a home. Avondale’s fees nearly doubled with an $8,000 increase, bringing the total burden to a whopping $18,000 per home.

I guess I’m sympathetic, especially when the “[n]et effect is to make the American Dream unaffordable for people of modest means.”

The “net effect” is also to increase the cost to home builders whose new constructions bear the additional cost of impact fees not levied on resales. Home builders like Shea Homes, who it turns out hired Bolick as recently as April to represent it - what a coincidence! - in Chandler, this time against the Chandler Unified School District.

From the April 3, 2007 East Valley Tribune’s editorial on Bolick’s work for Shea Homes:

As the Tribune’s Tammy Kirkorian reported Friday, Shea Homes is pressuring the school district to reconsider by hiring an aggressive public relations firm and attorney Clint Bolick, a school choice advocate.

The Chandler district shouldn’t surrender to bullying tactics from Shea. But most residents of the older Seville neighborhood have been waiting the longest for Riggs Elementary, and our sense of fairness suggests Chandler should open the school’s doors to them. Then, the district and Shea Homes would have a couple of years to conduct an education campaign warning residents in newer parts of Seville that their children may eventually attend another new school in the area.

So my question: When Bolick complains about impact fees, is he complaining as the director of the Center for Constitutional Litigation at the Goldwater Institute, or is he complaining as an attorney representing Shea Homes.