https://savebenewahcounty.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Agrarian-19.pdf
Editorial as it appeared in the St. Maries Gazette-Record (11/19/25):
Do What Reagan Did . . . Deregulate
Without piling on our beleaguered County Commissioners over the current fiscal crisis, let me just offer a solution for consideration: do what
Ronald Reagan would have done . . . and did.
Deregulate.
If the tax base cannot support legitimate government services, then grow the tax base. The best way to do that is by deregulation.
In Reagan’s day, it was called “supply-side economics.”
Until something better comes along to fund local government, property valuations are the foundation of the tax base. Benewah County needs a building boom.
The Commissioners need to bring back the building codes we had before the UN Global Warming zealots took over. They need to simplify the
permitting process so that the people don’t have to hire an attorney. They need to liberalize subdividing and cut the fees. . . the opposite of what they have been doing the past ten years.
As I recall, back in the day when Mike Miland was the building inspector, he just required a floor plan (after construction was completed) and that the property was insurable. Otherwise, the property owner was free to improve and develop his property as he saw fit. Benewah County had a reputation of small government and freedom which attracted a sustainable and stable growth for the county.
If we don’t want the county to devolve into some kind of communistic freak show of high fees, unenforceable codes, and a snarling permitting
process run by lazy bureaucrats, then we need to give freedom a chance.
James Stivers