Superior Court Judge Howard Manning, Jr. ruled yesterday that the State of North Carolina’s attempt to legislate the City of Asheville’s water system into the hands of the Metropolitan Sewerage District was un-Constitutional, and that it didn’t make sense, anyway. On the one hand, advantages to the transfer would more appropriately, if not catastrophically, get Asheville out of a questionable role of government, and it would sever a revenue stream to a government intent on pursuing progressive growth beyond its Malthusian limits.
But that’s not the way we’re supposed to do things in this country. We’re not supposed to have a big government that goes around taking from this guy to give to that guy just because it supports some whimsy. Extrapolating from Lord Acton, if power corrupts, then one definitely does not want those with a disproportionate share making the decisions.
As a fan of the US Constitution, I consider the decision a victory, even though I stand to benefit as a taxpayer in Asheville. Hopefully, City Manager Gary Jackson et al. can repurpose funding that would have gone to litigation, and we won’t have to pay the cost of restructuring government without the water system. Most importantly, though, we see that the General Assembly has been reminded that it can’t go around taking the lunch money from the unpopular kids.
