Robert Moses has been a boogeyman for the left for decades due to his indifference to important American values. There are plenty of parks and useful roads in New York that wouldn’t exist without his energetic support, however. How can we change our regulatory system to keep the good side of Moses and expel the bad side?
Here are three ideas. First, give federal, state, and local governments the right to bypass the regular process on projects that are genuinely of overriding public importance. Second, put statutory deadlines in permitting process and enforce them. Third, find a way to compensate the people who wind up losing their rights in the expedited process in the name of the public interest. I have posted on ways to do this in zoning on previous occasions; the state and federal governments could surely find a way to cut taxes on regulatory victims in other cases.