States in red have adopted laws that preempt cities from passing their own local minimum wage laws—as of January 31, 2017. Source: NELP.
The Republican Party and corporate-backed groups like the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council have made “state preemption” of local political and economic powers a top priority for decades. Left-leaning electoral movements have been sluggish in their response.
Despite Occupy and other mobilizations against globalized capitalism, for example, the institutional left has stopped short of promoting anything close to the structural change that would be necessary to accommodate pro-local projects. Yet municipalist movements are broadly supported in the United States, in movements for local control over renewable energy, education, the minimum wage, and other issues.
A new poll commissioned by Local Solutions Support Center shows that a majority of voters nationally disapprove of state legislatures’ preemption of local laws expanding worker benefits, increasing wage increases, and tightening gun controls.
The poll also found that 70 percent of people think state preemption “happens frequently or sometimes due to corporate special interests and lobbyists convincing state lawmakers to preempt local laws to protect their profits.” And 58 percent believe local governments are more knowledgeable of community needs.
Despite Occupy and other mobilizations against globalized capitalism the institutional left has stopped short of promoting the structural change necessary to accommodate pro-local projects.
Rene Lara, legislative director of the Texas AFL-CIO, says an informal coalition of groups has unified in response to that state’s flood of preemption laws. Local governments in Texas are now prohibited from hindering federal immigration enforcement, raising the minimum wage, curtailing fossil fuel extraction, regulating payday loans, protecting local seed varieties from genetically modified pollen, and much more.
Opponents see “the overall issue of state preemption as a common threat,” Lara says.
In Florida, gubernatorial hopeful Andrew Gillum, the mayor of Tallahassee, has made defending local solutions a key campaign issue, helping to bring together a diverse coalition of groups stifled by the state’s undermining of municipal governments. A laundry list of gun control advocates, environmental groups, labor unions, immigrant rights organizations, and local elected officials have signed on to the Campaign to Defend Local Solutions, which is helping to make state preemption a top issue ahead of the November 2018 elections.
But pushing back against preemption is not just a matter of winning elections. People who feel disenfranchised by what they see as a corrupt, centralized power structure aren’t looking for the next elected official to save the day. They want to save their own day.
Tish O’Dell, Ohio state organizer for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, has worked with more than a dozen communities on local ordinances that challenge state preemption and corporate “personhood.” The group is now advancing a state constitutional amendment to affirm the right of local governments to build on state and federal government protections. It would establish state law as a “floor” local governments can raise but not lower.
“The people understand that they need to change the system itself to codify their decision making authority to self-govern their communities above corporate or state claims of preemption,” O’Dell said in an interview.
It’s great to win elections and get some of that power back, but that doesn’t address all of the reasons local communities are powerless to protect themselves in the first place.
Minimum wage preemption, fracking preemption, payday loan preemption, and rent control preemption, are all symptoms of a broader imbalance of power. It’s great to win elections and get some of that power back, but that doesn’t address all of the reasons local communities are powerless to protect themselves in the first place.
In Michigan, the state legislature’s suspension of local governments has disproportionately targeted predominantly African American communities in Detroit and Flint. Detroit-based “water warrior” Monica Lewis-Patrick says the state has for decades undermined Detroit’s democratic control over its water system and set up the city for financial ruin. The ongoing water crisis in Flint and Detroit is bringing these historic power dynamics to the fore.
Similar histories of state meddling in inner-city public education is also rearing its head across the nation, as privatization of traditional public schools has relied heavily on states’ suspension of local school districts. In fact, countering “state takeovers” of local schools and school districts has become a central concern of a leading education justice #WeChoose campaign resisting the privatization of public education.
Movements are afoot to develop a comprehensive vision of egalitarian federalism and “local control,” one that guarantees civil and human rights while also guaranteeing basic rights to local democratic decisions. The new poll by Local Solutions Support Center shows that the public is ready for such a vision.
Simon Davis-Cohen is editor of the Ear to the Ground newsletter, an exclusive “civic intelligence” service that mines local newspapers and state legislatures from across the country.