The telecommunications revolution is advancing at such a clip that governments at all levels are having trouble keeping up.
Police departments are scrambling to monitor criminal activity in cyberspace. Local officials are scrambling for legal ways to tax new technologies such as satellite broadcasting and Internet subscription services just as they now tax older technologies such as telephone and cable TV.
This tendency of technology to leapfrog regulation is, by and large, a healthy thing. There is no greater guarantee against governmental tyranny than the free and unregulated flow of information. The former Soviet Union was undone, ultimately, by glasnost and an invasion of mass media, not NATO tanks.
So there is a tendency to applaud when local governments are pre-empted from taxing or regulating new communications technology. Trouble is, a new rule by the Federal Communications Commission that prevents locals from regulating the placement of small microwave TV dishes in residential districts simply goes too far. The rule, which takes effect April 17, forbids the nation’s 23,000 municipalities and townships from using zoning and building codes to regulate the placement of antenna dishes less than 1 meter in diameter.
In the spirit of the recently enacted telecommunications act, the FCC wants to sweep away local barriers to direct broadcast television services. The technology is proving enormously popular, with 2.6 million U.S. households already capturing satellite TV signals, typically with dishes just 18 inches in diameter.
But many towns, including the City of Chicago and scores of its suburbs, have placed restrictions on where those dishes can be mounted. Chicago, for instance, wants them out of sight from the street and in the rear of a residential property; it also requires master dishes for apartment buildings rather than individual window-mounted units.
Satellite broadcasters argue that cities can’t be trusted to regulate dishes for aesthetic reasons because cities often have revenue-producing franchise agreements with their competitors, the cable-TV companies. Indeed, the potential for abuse is undeniable.
But so too is the right of local citizens, as exercised through local government, to regulate the appearance of their neighborhoods, at least as long as those regulations don’t trammel other, constitutionally guaranteed rights. A local ordinance that requires antenna dishes to be located at the rear of a lot or the rear of a roof does not violate those rights.
(The new FCC rule does violate, however, the spirit of “devolution” that is supposed to be sweeping Washington. The idea that local governments know better than distant ones what’s best for their citizens is an idea that cannot be dragged out or put away depending on the alignment of special interests.)
The FCC rule should be amended to allow reasonable aesthetic restrictions by local citizens and their governments.
