Social engineering of cities at the state level, revealed again during the pandemic

According to this news article, Atlanta’s mayor recently asked Governor Kemp to allow her the legal right to enforce face masks for any gathering of 10 people or more in the city. He refused. Which puts the city in the difficult position of trying to prevent contagion of coronavirus at a time when stay-at-home orders have been rescinded and people are congregating again.

This is just one example of the many ways that state laws prevent cities from doing good things, sometimes with deadly consequences.

State and federal leaders will often tout the importance of “local control” as an excuse to deny physical or monetary resources to cities (see: funding for COVID-19 testing; or operations funding for transit).

But when it comes to allowing cities to shape their own locally-beneficial laws, suddenly “controlling locals” is the rule.

Atlanta can’t legally enforce speed limits with cameras or lasers on most city streets because the state denies us the right — even though Atlanta’s streets are among the deadliest for pedestrians in the entire U.S., according to a study of congressional districts by Smart Growth America. That lack of control is killing people.

Atlanta can’t legally apply a parking tax to commercial lots and decks and use the revenue for transit operations or pedestrian infrastructure because the state forbids it. We could really use that help for pedestrian safety and transit services.

And now, the city can’t even enforce the common-sense step of wearing a face mask while grouping happens during a deadly coronavirus. The implication of a majority-Black city being disallowed to have extra control for containing a pandemic that is killing Black residents to an outsized degree shouldn’t be overlooked.

Any time you hear a state or federal leader talk about local control being important, consider for a minute all the ways that their laws prevent local control of many things, for political reasons. This is manipulation. It’s social engineering of liberal-leaning cities by more conservative state leaders, plain and simple, for political gain. It prevents cities from being as strong and secure as they can be.