The Best-Laid Plans: How Government Planning Harms Your Quality of Life, Your Pocketbook, and Your Future
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
12:00 – 2:00 p.m.
Lunch will be served.
Multnomah Athletic Club
1849 SW Salmon Street
Portland, OR
Sponsored by The Cato Institute, Cascade Policy Institute, and Oregonians in Action
Featuring
Randal O’Toole
Senior Fellow, Cato Institute
With comments by
Ed Crane
President, Cato Institute
John Charles
President, Cascade Policy Institute
and
David Hunnicutt
President, Oregonians in Action
Thirty-six years ago, Oregon began an unprecedented land-use planning program that attempts to control how all property owners use their land. Today, the results are in: the program has imposed huge costs on rural landowners, urban homebuyers, commuters, and businesses while producing minimal environmental gains compared with states that do not have such planning. Yet too few people have learned this lesson. Federal, state, and local governments in the U.S. employ more than 20,000 planners who attempt to write comprehensive, long-range plans that attempt to control other people’s land, money, and resources. These plans almost always end in disaster.
In his new book, The Best-Laid Plans, Randal O’Toole demonstrates that comprehensive, long-range planning of other people’s resources is always doomed to fail, and that Congress and state and local governments should repeal existing planning laws and shut down planning departments. O’Toole shows that the problems that planning claims to address can be better dealt with through user fees, markets, and other incentives rather than through regulatory planning.
Cost to attend is $20.
To register, please contact Nancy Wheaton at Cascade Policy Institute by calling 503-242-0900 or emailing nancy@cascadepolicy.org.
