The new fiscal role in land-use planning.

• Author: Lawton, Stephen
• Position: REACTION

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The argument of "The Missing Metric" is that we could stand back from the fray, examine the facts together, argue our values, and be guided in our policy decisions by quantitative estimates of long-term outcomes.

Our nation and its citizens would be much better off if we could squarely face the enormous economic and financial challenges that result from our settlement patterns. Peter Katz's fiscal impact quotient is a sensible and welcome addition to an honorable tradition, rooted in Progressive ideals. The argument is that we could stand back from the fray, examine the facts together, argue our values, and be guided in our policy decisions by quantitative estimates of long-term outcomes. The abstractions and jargon of the Smart Growth movement would become mere common sense, uncontroversial and routine.

This Progressive strain of rational assessment and decision making actually underlies much of today's governmental organization, procedure, and legal framework. It is seen everywhere, as legislative bodies make their findings and administrators follow their guidelines. Unacknowledged but widely accepted, rational assessment is arguably our most valuable governance legacy from a century of experience reaching back to the early days of large industrial organizations. It is a pragmatic, American style of framing a narrative about how to make decisions.

But in the policy and legislative arenas, rational checklists and quantitative assessments are honored mainly in the breach. Policy is the trophy of power, and land-use policy is mostly a recording of the outcomes of battles fought amongst contending interest groups. Smart Growth advocates have recently joined the fray, contending with industrially organized mass homebuilders, agricultural interests, institutional investors, small homeowners, road builders, retailers, environmentalists, and other interest groups. One group's checklist is another group's deadly weapon. Government agencies with land-use authority would need to play very strong roles to assert the primacy of fiscal impact quotients in the frameworks for policy setting and individual land-use decisions.

Complicating the picture are the problems of subsidiarity (the principle that matters should be handled by the smallest, lowest, or least centralized authority that is capable of addressing it effectively) and overlapping jurisdiction, illustrated in Katz's Millville tale. Local land-use authority is...