If your next-door neighbor decided to start brewing beer in his garage, and the fermenting yeast made your house smell like rotten eggs, you could sue him for nuisance, enjoin him from making beer, and seek damages to repair the damage to your house.
That is a fair common law principle.
But what if the city you live in refuses to enforce anti-vagrancy laws, such as bans on camping, panhandling, or public urination? What if the resulting homelessness encampments increase crime in your neighborhood and result in your home smelling like urine?
There is no cause of action in common law against a local government for not enforcing the law. If the mayor and district attorney decide not to enforce your city’s anti-vagrancy laws, and your home suffers as a result, your only recourse is the ballot box.
Some Arizonans want to change that.
The Arizona House passed a resolution this month that places an initiative on the November ballot that would enable real property owners to win tax refunds in state court if they could show a city’s decision not to enforce anti-vagrancy laws caused monetary damage to their property.
“What it really boils down to is, when we have citizens who break laws, the government has a lot of tools to go after citizens that don’t follow the law,” Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen said when debating the legislation. “But when our government doesn’t follow the law or enforce the law, our citizens are limited on what they can do.”
If the ballot measure passes this November, an aggrieved property owner would have to show in state court that a city, town, or county adopted “a policy, pattern or practice that declines to enforce existing laws, ordinances or other legislation prohibiting illegal camping, loitering, panhandling, public urination or defecation, public consumption of alcoholic beverages or possession or use of illegal substances.”
Once the “policy, pattern, or practice” of nonenforcement has been established, the property owner must document expenses undertaken to undo the harm caused by the localities’ nonenforcement. Once those damages are established, the Arizona Department of Revenue will subtract those damages from the property owner’s tax bill, which includes revenue collected by cities, towns, and counties. The value of the reward can be spread over a property owner’s tax liability for up to 10 years.
Too often, it is wealthy Democratic Party voters who can sequester themselves in gated communities and high-rise apartment buildings so they do not have to suffer the harm that their nonenforcement policies cause others in their community.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
This ballot initiative will make sure Democrats who choose not to enforce laws are hit where it hurts most: in their budgets. As their public fiefs are threatened, officeholders will move quickly to make sure the law is enforced.
Not only should other states copy Arizona, but they should go even further. District attorneys should be financially accountable when criminals they choose either not to prosecute or to let out on parole go on to harm again. We already have a framework of federal law to protect citizens from overzealous enforcement of the law. Now, we need protection from underenforcement.
