They may not be straightforward or easily articulated, though, so just read them through and absorb the awfulness. Here’s the background:

Built in the 1980s and 1990s where Scituate Avenue meets Furnace Hill Brook, Alpine Estates was one of the first of what would become many modern subdivisions on what used to be western Cranston farmland.

It features large Colonials with stately garages – some might call them “McMansions” – on half-acre lots. Only one home was listed for sale in the neighborhood on Zillow last week: a 3,200-square-foot three-bedroom whose owner was asking $800,000.

The undeveloped western edge of the neighborhood still requires a minimum of 2 acres per lot because, despite the city’s Comprehensive Plan calling for it, it was never rezoned to match Alpine Estates. …

In 2019, the Casales asked the city for a zone change to half-acre minimum lots so they could build eight houses in Alpine Estates instead of the four possible under the existing 2-acre zoning.

Being a bit of a policy nut, I think the most-important detail is the plaintiffs’ argument that “under state law, the Comprehensive Plan trumps the zoning ordinance.”  That’s a crucial reminder to Rhode Islanders that we can’t think of these planning activities as somebody else’s nice little community-focused hobby.  The intent is to dictate the rules for our towns and cities when nobody is watching and make it impossible to resist the push of the top-down planners.  I think of a nice lady in town who casually talked about figuring out the best use of Tiverton’s waterfront and manipulating ordinances to devalue the land so its current owners wouldn’t be able to continue their current usage or sell it for use that might not fit the nice lady’s ideal view for her commute home.

That said, the nitty-gritty political processes are telling, too.  The reason a mayoral veto was not overridden to change the zoning was that Democrat Speaker of the Rhode Island House Joseph Shekarchi once represented the plaintiffs as a private attorney, so one of the Democrat council members recused from the vote because she works in Shekarchi’s legislative office at the State House.

The speaker of the house has long been understood to be the most-powerful elected official in the state, yet a person in that office is out there advocating for paying clients before other elected officials in his own political party, one of whom works for him.  Imagine if the governor maintained private practice as an attorney while in office.  The incestuous knot is tangled, indeed.

To be fair, the practical solution is not obvious.  Voters can’t really expect part-time legislators not to have other jobs, and not many people agree with me that we’d be better off with a full-time legislature enabling people with ordinary jobs to substitute elective office for them.  As it is, running for legislative office only makes sense for those who are retired (often from unionized government jobs that enable early retirement), independently wealthy, and/or able to integrate elective office profitably into their careers.  Banning lawyers from holding these offices, however, would be politically impossible.

On the other hand, the theoretical solution is obvious.  We need a government that is less intimately involved in our lives.  If voters preferred politicians who promised not to meddle, rather than promising to impose their interests on everybody else, “part-time legislator” could, indeed, be a side gig of community service.  Moreover, the speaker would not be so powerful, and towns wouldn’t be grappling with progressive planning schemes pressured on them from above.

Featured image by Justin Katz using Dall-E 3 and Photoshop AI.