Foes of Red Rock development miss the larger picture

The environmentalists at Save Red Rock are cheering Assembly Bill 277 that will put the kibosh on Jim Rhodes’ plan to construct 5,000 homes on Blue Diamond Hill. The bill, with nine sponsors and 22 co-sponsors, falls right in the wheelhouse of the Democrat-dominated Legislature that values rocks and lizards over humans and property rights.

Heather Fisher, Save Red Rock’s president, called the bill a blessing. “It is written in a sensitive way to protect existing neighborhoods and homebuilders, and to preserve our state’s most beautiful natural attractions at the same time,” she wrote in a statement.

But Ron Krater of Gypsum Resources had it right, telling the Review-Journal, “It would be taking of private property rights for tens of thousands of land owners.”

While Ms. Fisher and her Red Rockistas are kept awake at night at the prospect of humans living in homes on Blue Diamond Hill, the effects of AB 277 reach far beyond Red Rock. Boulder City, already depressed and on the verge of absorbing another blow to the small town’s vitality, with the new Interstate 11 soon to divert traffic around the city, would be further traumatized economically by the bill. Towns such as Moapa, Incline Village and Lake Tahoe also would be affected.

There is nothing sensitive about Assembly Bill 277. It is pure, unadulterated brute force by government to take away property rights — all to keep a hill already pockmarked by mining from being a lovely neighborhood. As UCLA professor Armen A. Alchian wrote, “Property rights are human rights.”