Despite long advocating small government and local control, Republican governors and legislators across a significant swath of the country are increasingly overriding the actions of Democratic cities — removing elected district attorneys or threatening to strip them of power, taking over election offices and otherwise limiting local independence.
State lawmakers proposed nearly 700 bills this year to circumscribe what cities and counties can do, according to Katie Belanger, lead consultant for the Local Solutions Support Center, a national organization focused in part on ending the overreach it calls “abusive state preemption.”
The group’s tracking mostly found “conservative state legislatures responding to or anticipating actions of progressive cities,” she said, with many bills designed to bolster state restrictions on police defunding, abortion, and LGBTQ and voting rights. As of mid-October, at least 92 had passed.
In Florida, for instance, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed sweeping measures that empower the state attorney […]
This local vs. State rule has been a tension for some time, and although this article illustrates Democrats’ range of action being limited by Republicans at the state level the opposite has occurred as well. It’s just that Democrat’s don’t campaign on limited government as do Republicans, so the hypocrisy is less evident. Democrat’s are happy to intervene when it suits their agenda. This is why we have a court system and a process of being bound by precedent.