The state isn’t your friend, but it can be improved

I’m in the process of remodeling an investment property and have been doing it by the book — with building permits, inspections and licensed contractors who follow the rules and pay the required fees. So it was with some amusement that I received a notice from the code enforcement department warning about a minor transgression.

I had indeed allowed my lawn to become overgrown and hadn’t noticed because I live hundreds of miles away. Shame on me. Officials were polite and professional, so it was no big deal. I quickly rectified the situation, but found the incident to be revealing. For years, the neighboring property has been in an astounding state of disrepair.

It has debris and an inoperable car in the yard. The building seems to be collapsing.

When I sit on my patio drinking wine, rats routinely scurry from the unkempt property past my chair. The situation didn’t garner obvious City Hall attention until neighbors complained about a giant RV that suddenly appeared out front. That’s government in a nutshell.

Cities have voluminous codes to protect health and safety, yet they rarely deal with true public-safety concerns, such as the sprawling homeless encampments and open-air drug markets that have taken over nearby city parks. That takes time and effort. But it’s easy to send a notice to generally responsible residents, who can be counted on to fix problems and pay their fines.

Once, a vicious mutt was roaming our neighborhood. It killed my daughter’s cat. We couldn’t get the animal-control department’s attention. It was too busy dealing with other things, I suppose. Yet that same department could be remarkably efficient, such as the time I got a knock on the door from an animal-control officer after I forgot to renew the license for my housedog.

There’s a reason our forebears referred to federal agents who shut down illegal booze operations as “revenuers.” The government’s main purpose — perhaps its sole purpose — is to keep the tax revenue flowing. If you want to get a police agency’s attention, don’t report a crime. Instead, threaten to clamp down on its property seizing powers or start talking about the agency’s pension liabilities.

Yet everyone on the left, right and center seems to support laws that will improve this, that or some other thing. California’s progressive government