On anti-federalism measures

At Issue: The impact of ill-conceived legislation that hardly takes into account factual assessment of cost to local governments.

Our View: NMI must support the Federalism Accountability Act that has gained bipartisan support in the US Congress.

There is legislation before the US Congress that would hopefully shift power back to state and local governments designed to make it harder for Congress and the executive branch to adopt laws and rules that pre-empt local government authority on a wide range of issues.

The legislation has been written at the urging of seven organizations representing state and local lawmakers, including the National Governors’ Association, the National Conference of State Legislatures and the National League of Cities.

While there are dissenting views on the proposed legislation, Senator Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., Chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee said that “critics were wildly distorting the consequences of the legislation, which he said was not much more than ‘truth in government and truth in legislating’.”

He pointed out: “The two most fundamental questions in government are: 1). What should the government be doing”, and, 2). “At what level should it be doing it.” He further stated that “every time there is a news story, we run to the floor and we want to federalize it.” The proposed measure “will not be willy-nilly pre-empting state and local governments without explicitly saying that is what we intend to do”.

A year ago, the National Governors’ Association attended by Governor Pete P. Tenorio supported the measure that essentially would slam the brakes on the federal government from considering and issuing policy decisions that often discount true assessments of the impact of new policies on state and local governments.

In the case of the NMI, the proposed federal takeover would render these isles an instant economic meltdown, destined to ruin the economic foundation we have built since 1978 or 22 years ago. The studies prepared by the US Department of Interior are “flawed” and were propped-up to justify–in the name of reform–the whims of moneyed textile labor unions.

The NMI should articulate its concerns on why such measure is needed so to make it harder for the federal government to impose whimsical policy decisions against the livelihood of governance at the local level. It is a piece of legislation that current leadership must support all out in the name of our rights to self-government. Si Yuus Maase`!