Texas state politics/law is completely f'd in so many ways, but one thing they do that I think is fantastic, and I wish all states did, was have a "Sunset Review Commission", https://www.sunset.texas.gov/how-sunset-works.
Basically, all agencies that are authorized by the legislature are set to automatically be abolished in (usually) 12 years. Once the expiration date is near, the Sunset Commission reviews the agency and recommends whether to reauthorize it, in which case the legislature must pass a law to reauthorize, but the "default" is that the agency expires.
This really helps fight the natural tendency of lots of these professional agencies to grow to protect their own power, regardless of their original purpose. And even if agencies are normally always renewed, the review process itself is really useful to, when necessary, smack these agencies upside the head to get them back to their original goal. One example I'm familiar with, a couple years ago the Sunset Commission basically tore the Texas Veterinary Board a new one after they decided to go after animal shelter vets for trying to save animals with extremely limited resources, https://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/article/One-third-of... - actual report at https://www.sunset.texas.gov/public/uploads/files/reports/St...
I wonder what would happen if we did this with laws. There are so many laws that get passed that are literally no longer applicable (funding to build a bridge in the US is done as a law), but also I wonder if this would engage everyone a bit more in how the country runs.
"It may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law.... Every constitution then, & every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, & not of right"
- Thomas Jefferson to James Madison in 1789, expressing feelings on why laws should automatically expire
Auto-expiry of laws is an interesting idea, and one that gets floated here on HN with some regularity (possibly because it appeals to the refactoring mindset?)
I wonder about "Chesterton's Fence" effects, though - maybe we'd have to make a _lot_ more use of the "institutional memory" of the non-political parts of government. Behind every law, there's usually at least some advisory recommendations / reports from various agencies, and over 10-30 year timescales there's a non-zero chance that some of the original authors of those are still around.
Otherwise, we'd run the "junior developer" risk of perpetually refactoring laws without understanding the reasoning behind them, and breaking functionality users depend on in the process. Sure, it's obvious that some blue law about not pasturing your cow on ye towne grasse on ye Holye Sundaye is outdated, but I suspect those obvious deprecation cases are few and far between. Thoughtful, context-aware refactoring applies to systems in general, not just computer systems.
Alternatively, the renewal of the EPA or the FTC or the FDA would be filibustered and agencies would stop existing, leading to rivers catching on fire and snake oil salesmen using deceptive ads.
That might be a good idea. But I’m not sure your example is a good one.
Repealing a budget law only adds paperwork and cost and complexity. It’s not like these kinds laws have an ongoing cost.
I wonder if one issue is just perception: people often see laws as “ongoing rules” when they can often just be, “on this date congress agreed to these terms and conditions for some thing.”
usually they are unceremoniously reauthorized by Congress because its just too much to think about
sometimes Congress forgets (or the related lobbyist forgot/couldnt get a lunch date with the co-sponsor)
but this isn't a perfect system its just more case load in practice that no individual person is aware of
I personally cant think of any debate that occurred on an upcoming sunset provision where people consciously said “yeah that has no more applicability let it expire” or “we have to reauthorize this or itll be a disaster” its just nobody has time to think about it so they rubber stamp it in the annual budget reconciliation bill to keep the government open
the previous sitting President made an Executive Order that for every new regulation passed, "at least two" must be repealed. but then everyone kind of ignored it, because it's an Executive Order. would be nice to have something like that but for real though. the best commits are ones where you delete more lines than you add...
Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid would no longer exist. Nor would the Clean Water Act or the Clean Air Act. The ACA would have expired two years ago, too.
There are problems with term limits, indeed... but is the alternative really to keep the status quo and have essentially a generation of wealthy gerontocrats in power who are completely disconnected from the reality of life for many of their constituents, not to mention who are fucking over the planet? Politics needs continuous supply of fresh blood, people who grew up with computers and no fossils unable to read e-mails that aren't printed out by aides for them. And of young people who have realized that it is no longer possible to join a company at 16 for an apprenticeship and leave it for pension at 65, or that a single earner can no longer afford a comfortable home.
And while we are at it: We need not just term limits, we especially need age caps for politicians and corporate officials. Reach pension age and you're irrevocably out. Here in Germany, old buffoons at the helm of companies who refuse to use computers are the single worst issue for the German Mittelstand. Companies that can't adapt because the owner is stuck in 1960 mentally will wither and die eventually - and while I don't care about ignorant owners, I do care about the employees and the loss of economic contributions.
So your article claims term limits are bad (didn't say they are a scam) because they increase the power of those who are in it for them long haul. And it will weaken Congress (not sure how you can make the weak Congress weaker) and give more power to the executive branch... You know the branch that has term limits.
Are you saying they wouldn't exist because they wouldn't get reapproved? Because that is what you are implying.
And term limits are definitely not a scam
The more civilised way of doing this is to have an independent commission whose job it is to regularly review the state of the laws on the books and put forward lists of them to be repealed by the legislature.
This works quite well in the UK, for example, where Statute Law (Repeals) Acts have been passed[0] every few years since 1969, with the most recent[1] repealing the whole of 817 Acts of Parliament, and portions of more than 50 others.
I think that's a good system and it is nice it exists, but I sense that expiring something might be a better way.
There's a lot to be said to having people step up to defend something instead of having people attack something bad, or even overlook it out of ignorance.
I also remember one thing trump did I thought was interesting was that adding a new regulation required eliminating 2 existing regulations.
Hey, just by the way, it seems your characterization of the outcome with regards to vets at animal shelters is not correct. It's kind of the opposite. It starts on page 41 of the PDF (second link). The problem was: "Recent court decisions prevent the State Board of Veterinary
Medical Examiners from regulating shelter veterinarians or
veterinary medicine practiced in animal shelters."
"Strictly interpreted, the statutory exemption means anyone who practices
veterinary medicine in the context of animal shelters and rescue groups is exempt
from the Veterinary Licensing Act, including standard of care measures and
use of controlled substances. The impact of the decisions is already having an
effect on the oversight and regulation of veterinary medicine in Texas, as the
agency has begun to close all complaints against shelter veterinarians, declaring
them non-jurisdictional based on the decisions.
Taken to the extreme and assuming the Act does not apply in the context of
shelter medicine, animal shelters and rescue groups would not need to hire
licensed veterinarians. If the Act does not apply to the care of these animals,
any person regardless of training, education, or qualification, and regardless of
their criminal or disciplinary history, would legally be able to practice veterinary
medicine on shelter and rescue animals."
The recommendation from the Sunset Commission was therefore for the legislature to change the law to make sure veterinary medicine at rescue clinics WAS regulated.
Since I'm familiar with the details, here is what happened:
1. Texas Vet Board sued a very well-known shelter vet in Texas to revoke her license. Without getting into too much detail, the crux of it was that they wanted to hold shelter vets, who are all on very limited budgets, to the same standards as private vets. The irony is that, if shelter vets can't meet those standards, the Texas Vet Board is OK with just euthanizing the animals. The irony was brutal: "We want you to be held at a certain standard to protect the animals, but if you can't hit that, just kill them."
2. The vet countersued, saying there is a specific carve out in law for owners to treat their own pets, and legally shelter pets have been relinquished and are owned by the shelter. She won this case.
3. During the Sunset Commission hearings, the panel went hard after the Vet Board, basically saying they were harassing shelter vets for the sole purpose of trying to protect their own power (similar to the "everyone who draws a map needs to be licensed" BS in this post), while meanwhile they had a severe problem with not tracking and handling substance abuse issues by some vets. 3 of the Vet Board members ended up resigning because the Commission basically said "you suck".
4. Now, the situation that remained after the court cases was, as you pointed out, there was no more regulation of shelter vets. I think a lot of folks, including shelter vets, think this is not ideal, but they are very wary of being regulated by a board with very different goals (which are, honestly, protect the fees that vets can charge) from the goals that shelter vets have. So there has been some discussion since then about what level of regulation is right for shelter vets.
FWIW the status quo has remained the same - shelters legally own the animals in their care, and thus, as owners, shelter vets are not regulated by the Vet Board for the care they give their animals.
I only read the quoted text not the source link, but I dont see a reasonable basis for the recommendation inference you are making.
The commission is just stating the facts. I don't think they are advocating any change in law. (again from the quoted text).
The fact remains that state veterinarian boards were going after shelter practitioners, the court then gtanted shelters relief - on the basis of the Act - then the Commission generated the post-mortem on the Act.
There seems to be no recommendation from the quoted text?
I guess out of sight out of mind would apply here. Even if rubber stamped repeatedly maybe it will present an opportunity to catch the eye of some inquisitive type to ask why?
Why should those commissions be abolished? I've heard complaints about them, like I've heard complaints about every single regulating body in existence. but I haven't heard so many that it seems like they should be disbanded.
The biggest difference between an official site survey and you (or him) doing it themselves is liability. It is pretty clear from the language on the site that they aren't accepting legal liability and are just a convenience over doing it yourself using Google Maps or a tape-measure.
I think the article is very well argued, and if this board's closure notice is allowed to stand then it will infringe on Californian's right to simply draw a map of their home or business. His business isn't offering site surveys and doesn't proclaim to, and to be honest even Google Maps/Bing/Apple could be at risk if this board's ability to close/ban this were allowed (they do show property boundaries after all).
The biggest problem they're going to run into is: Who has deeper pockets? Since often in the US legal system that can decide the winner/loser.
I largely agree with you, but it may be a situation where a disclaimer on the plans themselves would assuage the professional board.
The site itself includes a disclaimer (“THIS IS NOT A LEGAL SURVEY, NOR IS IT INTENDED TO BE OR REPLACE ONE.” ).
However, at least on the sample plans the site shows[1][2], there does not seem to be any disclaimer. A reasonable person may be mislead into thinking that the plans produced by that website are legal surveys - they have the appearance of a typical surveyor/engineer produced CAD drawing.
In all the engineering drawings I've seen, the title block is essentially your only way of ensuring contextual information is always associated with the drawing. Including relevant disclaimers in the title block is critical.
If the sample drawings shown are representative of the output of the site, they could do a better job by including reasonable disclaimers on each drawing.
It's not reasonable to see the disclaimer on the website and then conclude the opposite is true.
Right in the middle of the landing page, the site also states 'Our Site Plans are Non-Certified (Read More)' in the same list as their selling points. And their explanation of what this means is simple and to the point: https://www.mysiteplan.com/pages/certified-site-plans
Users of the site are very plainly advised. And if they submit those plans to local authorities or whoever, the people who evaluate them are competent to notice whether or not the plans are signed by a licensed surveyor. I'm not sure who you think is at risk of harm here.
A disclaimer is completely unnecessary on the plans, as official maps by surveyors or engineers have their stamps on them. The absence of those stamps proves it’s not trying to pass as a surveyor’s map.
> they aren't accepting legal liability and are just a convenience over doing it yourself
This is not a thing when it comes to regulated professional services. A provider doesn't get to choose whether they "accept" liability, or be "just a convenience".
I am not a lawyer, and this isn't legal advice, but I think your interpretation of constitutional law is obviously incorrect.
If someone needs a certified survey from a licensed professionals, they are not offering that service.
If someone want a drawing of their lot in proximity, something that a homeowner could do with a tape measure, or even just guess at, they will do it for you.
He's not claiming to provide "regulated professional services", in fact quite the opposite. If the California statute or regulation in question says that it is, it's wildly overbroad.
I recently used AcreValue.com to find the rough location of some remote timberland my late mother owned. I've never been there, nor has any other living member of my family. My niece is in the area, and wanted to go out and take a look at it (mainly to make sure no one has set up a meth lab out there or something). The map from AcreValue is perfectly adequate to navigate her to the area.
Now, we would be foolish to use that map in lieu of a professional surveyor if we were planning on building a wall around it or something, but we're not doing that, or anything like it.
I'm guessing from what people are saying that is that the AcreValue site is also illegal under California law.
Edit: I can tell that it's adequate because I also looked at the official county plat map, and can see that the AV map is congruent with the plat map, in respect to the (dirt) roads and geographic features of the surrounding area. I don't (and shouldn't) need to hire a surveyor for this.
But it is perfectly normal to limit liability on the basis of known limitations of the product. And liability will often depend on the client working within certain constraints.
For example you could hire an architect, ask them to do a preliminary sketch, fire them, add an extra floor to the design, and then construct the building based on that design. You cannot expect them to take liability.
>will infringe on Californian's right to simply draw a map of their home or business
Unless I'm missing something these sort of license laws only apply to providing services to other people. So cut your own hair, diasgnos your own illness, build your own kitchen, etc. but do it for someone else, especially for money, and you need a license.
As far as drawing maps goes I don't see it as any less worthy than other things we regulate. Boundaries tend to be important and those doing so for money should probably demonstrate a basic level of competence.
I think licensure has totally gone off the rails. But this doesn't strike me as the best example. Just get the license. Your 2nd paragraph has gone further off.
This really feels like a "spirit of the law" vs "letter of the law" situation - requiring that only a licensed surveyor "depict the location of property lines" seems totally reasonable as to prevent the "location of property lines" from eroding legally, but banning a site loaded with "THIS IS NOT A SURVEY" disclaimers does not.
A discrepancy between requirements from building departments and planning and platting departments is par for the course. Everywhere I have ever lived, the building department will accept an informal description of boundaries to determine whether or not a plan interferes with setback requirements, while a planning department or platting recorder will demand an officially certified survey to determine the actual parcel boundaries.
I think this site's "If your building department DOES NOT require a Surveyor, Engineer, or Architect Stamp our plans are just what you need!" disclaimer is quite spot-on and it is rather frustrating that they are getting targeted.
My own county (Boulder County, CO) offer a county-sponsored GIS service which is not surveyor-approved, with similar disclaimers. My surveyed parcel at my current household differed from their assessment by 5% and at my last household, by 10%. While this is a significant number, for building purposes, it isn't unreasonable - just a few degrees either way in the projection of edges. I think these sites should be allowed to stand with the acceptance that a suit based on the material contained in these sites would be bogus.
It sounds to me like what the law intends to say is that only professionals can actually draw the property lines--a quite reasonable restriction because a mistake can be hidden and expensive. However, it seems to me that what he's doing is simply taking the existing legal documentation and converting it to a 2D printout.
So Zillow should be banned? Informal drawings of property lines are useful and "good enough", and giving a monopoly on that to surveyors would be silly.
Seems pretty clear to me that the site's maps should be generating the warning on them. A downloaded PDF file is only an email away from being consumed by various forms of agents, fence builders, etc. and quickly loosing the disclaimer of the site. If they look legit, no reason why someone might not accidentally overlook when they do something based on the reasonable looking map
Maybe all they need to do is add the disclaimer to the generated maps?
Doesn't matter. Theyre not claiming to be legal property records. If they were, they'd say so, by whom, and what date.
It is a 1fa issue that I can say "This appears to be my property and I'm going to put my gardens in this area around my house".
And, you (royal, not personally) are an idiot if you trust non-authotarative pictures of boundaries for a real legal survey, and then do major things based on that.
There are times when a certification is a good idea, where safety is a concern for example. In these cases it seems it's just salty "engineering" boards that want to hold on to their archaic ways of doing things.
I have a Diploma in Landscape Architecture, but I am not allowed to call myself "Landscape Architect" until I join the "Association of German Landscape Architects" (BDLA) (and pay a monthly fee). I think it is a fairly common concept.
The title of this post is too mild - it's not just the $1000 fine but the fact that they are asking for the shutdown of his business, one that he has run for many years.
It's ridiculously broad legally and needs to be struck down.
> Crownholm, who is the founder of MySitePlan.com, a website that allows people to purchase informal maps for their property drawn from preexisting information and images, was issued a citation from the California Board for Professional Engineers, Land Surveyors, and Geologists, who claimed that Crownholm and the site were illegally practicing land surveying without a license.
If the maps are marketed as "informal", how do they have a valid case against him? This carries the stench of abusive protectionist harassment, leveraging massive Board resources against an individual.
you are overlooking the motives of a power-tripping California Board for Professional Engineers member, is what you are overlooking. those people (power-tripping people) do not make decisions based on intelligence or good judgement; they have the power to enforce a rule and they are going to enforce it no matter what the consequences are.
if you think this is not possible or is unlikely, I recommend you work in a small office somewhere for a year. even the slightest hint of an idea that a person has power over you will often make that person absolutely drunk with power.
what this Engineering organization is trying to do was tried a few years ago by some other Engineer organization somewhere and the engineer organization in question said something to the effect of "only engineers are allowed to do this, and we say who gets to call themselves engineers" and they lost quite resoundingly. it was wonderful, truly.
in that state and that field, neither of which I can remember now (getting old) anyone can say they are an engineer and be hired to do the work that this organization for engineers controlled for so long. they got a big head, they squeezed the wrong person, and they lost it all in court. they no longer are able to control who can call themselves an engineer; the state redefined it as "one who practices engineering" or something like that.
Maybe you're thinking of Mats Järlström who challenged red light cameras in Oregon based on simple math, stated he was an "engineer" but never held himself out as a "Professional Engineer", and was legally harassed by the Oregon board?
Laughable because LA City's system, Zimas, has property lines so poorly drawn over their satellite / aerial imagery. It is some simple alignment issue that puts your property line in your neighbors driveway, or your neighbors easement fully on their property. The sad thing is, this translates into surveys. Now my neighbors and I have completely nonsensical stamps in the ground that we have to figure out how to correct.
Sad thing is, it lines up in their 2001 imagery, but 2017 is off by a few feet.
> The sad thing is, this translates into surveys. Now my neighbors and I have completely nonsensical stamps in the ground that we have to figure out how to correct.
Are these "stamps in the grounds" actual survey pegs placed by licenced surveyors working from the official Lands & survey database after having triangulated from previously placed officvial survey pegs?
Misalignment of geomosaiced air photo images | poor rectification is one thing (and not altogether uncommon) but that's a world away from ground based triangulated surveying backed by dual GPS against ground station modern survey techniques (which extend from a time before air photo surveys became common).
Ex-land surveyor here. They're called corner monuments or property corners. However, in residential areas they are usually not concrete monuments but rather a piece of iron rebar: https://www.cardinalsurveying.com/property-corner-markers/
I believe they are official ones. Little metal circles pinned into the cement. Survey was done by the previous owners. They line up with the ortho imagery and not with the logical property lines (what the entire street and every property on it are aligned to).
The ortho imagery has the front of the properties too far back on one side of the street and too far forward on the other, so it is not a single property line issue. The data set [1] used has tolerances listed but it is frustrating that it translates to a survey.
I would like to see these challenges happen more often
I think there is a fundamental limitation in US society that the only people that can challenge laws are the people that are damaged by them. You can't just look at the law in passing and take these exact obvious arguments to court because you have a little free time and money. You need free time, money, and a whole government agency coming after you trying to take all of your free time and money! What kind of power dynamic is that!?
We need a more comprehensive check and balance to get these laws in front of courts way earlier than that. I have some ideas if anyone is interested.
I'm a little interested, if you want to share a follow-up comment, but I had an idea of my own that I wanted to share too.
My vague understanding is that in international law, there is a mechanism by which, in theory, a nation can take up the grievance of an individual citizen and elevate that issue into a case that the nation itself has an interest in, which is then subject to the international legal processes that exists between nations.
Applying this principle within a nation, would mean that individual sub-national units (i.e. states, in the case of the US) would have standing to bring cases against other states or the federal government to the Supreme Court on behalf of individual citizens, even those resident in other states (presumably with the check and balance that the state legislature or executive bringing the case has to agree that the citizen's grievance was worth wasting their own state's tax payers' money to fight).
Of course this could lead to a tidal wave of unnecessary culture-war lawsuits being filed, as blue states and red states tried to undermine each other's laws, but I think that objection is somewhat misdirected. The real problem would be either that courts are understaffed / underfunded, or that it's somehow good that only the richest people with the most time on their hands can afford to challenge unconstitutional laws. Neither of those are really good reasons for disallowing the mechanism that I'm suggesting.
That could be an okay stop-gap solution if consensus couldn't be reached on new laws, since conflicts between states have original jurisdiction with the Supreme Court.
A concept that I heard about in at least one other country is that Governors and Presidents have an additional option when the legislature passes a bill to their desk. Instead of "sign" or "veto", there is at least an additional option of punting it directly to the constitutional court.
(Another tweak is that the constitutional court is not simultaneously an appellate court.)
and then of course is what I observed about who can have standing to bring something to the courts at all. I think one shouldn't need to be harmed already to bring a case to review.
Readit News
Basically, all agencies that are authorized by the legislature are set to automatically be abolished in (usually) 12 years. Once the expiration date is near, the Sunset Commission reviews the agency and recommends whether to reauthorize it, in which case the legislature must pass a law to reauthorize, but the "default" is that the agency expires.
This really helps fight the natural tendency of lots of these professional agencies to grow to protect their own power, regardless of their original purpose. And even if agencies are normally always renewed, the review process itself is really useful to, when necessary, smack these agencies upside the head to get them back to their original goal. One example I'm familiar with, a couple years ago the Sunset Commission basically tore the Texas Veterinary Board a new one after they decided to go after animal shelter vets for trying to save animals with extremely limited resources, https://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/article/One-third-of... - actual report at https://www.sunset.texas.gov/public/uploads/files/reports/St...
- Thomas Jefferson to James Madison in 1789, expressing feelings on why laws should automatically expire
Full letter: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-12-02-024...
I wonder about "Chesterton's Fence" effects, though - maybe we'd have to make a _lot_ more use of the "institutional memory" of the non-political parts of government. Behind every law, there's usually at least some advisory recommendations / reports from various agencies, and over 10-30 year timescales there's a non-zero chance that some of the original authors of those are still around.
Otherwise, we'd run the "junior developer" risk of perpetually refactoring laws without understanding the reasoning behind them, and breaking functionality users depend on in the process. Sure, it's obvious that some blue law about not pasturing your cow on ye towne grasse on ye Holye Sundaye is outdated, but I suspect those obvious deprecation cases are few and far between. Thoughtful, context-aware refactoring applies to systems in general, not just computer systems.
Repealing a budget law only adds paperwork and cost and complexity. It’s not like these kinds laws have an ongoing cost.
I wonder if one issue is just perception: people often see laws as “ongoing rules” when they can often just be, “on this date congress agreed to these terms and conditions for some thing.”
Even various key provisions of the Patriot Act
usually they are unceremoniously reauthorized by Congress because its just too much to think about
sometimes Congress forgets (or the related lobbyist forgot/couldnt get a lunch date with the co-sponsor)
but this isn't a perfect system its just more case load in practice that no individual person is aware of
I personally cant think of any debate that occurred on an upcoming sunset provision where people consciously said “yeah that has no more applicability let it expire” or “we have to reauthorize this or itll be a disaster” its just nobody has time to think about it so they rubber stamp it in the annual budget reconciliation bill to keep the government open
You can't expect people to “engage” when they just get ignored and politicians do what they want anyway.
https://youtu.be/BN8B12xmisY
I think this is a scam in the same way that pushes for term limits for politicians are a total scam: https://www.vox.com/polyarchy/2016/10/18/13323842/trump-term...
(and I say this as someone who is appalled by the fact that the average age of a US Senator is essentially at the retirement age.)
There are problems with term limits, indeed... but is the alternative really to keep the status quo and have essentially a generation of wealthy gerontocrats in power who are completely disconnected from the reality of life for many of their constituents, not to mention who are fucking over the planet? Politics needs continuous supply of fresh blood, people who grew up with computers and no fossils unable to read e-mails that aren't printed out by aides for them. And of young people who have realized that it is no longer possible to join a company at 16 for an apprenticeship and leave it for pension at 65, or that a single earner can no longer afford a comfortable home.
And while we are at it: We need not just term limits, we especially need age caps for politicians and corporate officials. Reach pension age and you're irrevocably out. Here in Germany, old buffoons at the helm of companies who refuse to use computers are the single worst issue for the German Mittelstand. Companies that can't adapt because the owner is stuck in 1960 mentally will wither and die eventually - and while I don't care about ignorant owners, I do care about the employees and the loss of economic contributions.
Dead Comment
This works quite well in the UK, for example, where Statute Law (Repeals) Acts have been passed[0] every few years since 1969, with the most recent[1] repealing the whole of 817 Acts of Parliament, and portions of more than 50 others.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_Law_%28Repeals%29_Act
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_Law_%28Repeals%29_Act_...
There's a lot to be said to having people step up to defend something instead of having people attack something bad, or even overlook it out of ignorance.
I also remember one thing trump did I thought was interesting was that adding a new regulation required eliminating 2 existing regulations.
"Strictly interpreted, the statutory exemption means anyone who practices veterinary medicine in the context of animal shelters and rescue groups is exempt from the Veterinary Licensing Act, including standard of care measures and use of controlled substances. The impact of the decisions is already having an effect on the oversight and regulation of veterinary medicine in Texas, as the agency has begun to close all complaints against shelter veterinarians, declaring them non-jurisdictional based on the decisions. Taken to the extreme and assuming the Act does not apply in the context of shelter medicine, animal shelters and rescue groups would not need to hire licensed veterinarians. If the Act does not apply to the care of these animals, any person regardless of training, education, or qualification, and regardless of their criminal or disciplinary history, would legally be able to practice veterinary medicine on shelter and rescue animals."
The recommendation from the Sunset Commission was therefore for the legislature to change the law to make sure veterinary medicine at rescue clinics WAS regulated.
1. Texas Vet Board sued a very well-known shelter vet in Texas to revoke her license. Without getting into too much detail, the crux of it was that they wanted to hold shelter vets, who are all on very limited budgets, to the same standards as private vets. The irony is that, if shelter vets can't meet those standards, the Texas Vet Board is OK with just euthanizing the animals. The irony was brutal: "We want you to be held at a certain standard to protect the animals, but if you can't hit that, just kill them."
2. The vet countersued, saying there is a specific carve out in law for owners to treat their own pets, and legally shelter pets have been relinquished and are owned by the shelter. She won this case.
3. During the Sunset Commission hearings, the panel went hard after the Vet Board, basically saying they were harassing shelter vets for the sole purpose of trying to protect their own power (similar to the "everyone who draws a map needs to be licensed" BS in this post), while meanwhile they had a severe problem with not tracking and handling substance abuse issues by some vets. 3 of the Vet Board members ended up resigning because the Commission basically said "you suck".
4. Now, the situation that remained after the court cases was, as you pointed out, there was no more regulation of shelter vets. I think a lot of folks, including shelter vets, think this is not ideal, but they are very wary of being regulated by a board with very different goals (which are, honestly, protect the fees that vets can charge) from the goals that shelter vets have. So there has been some discussion since then about what level of regulation is right for shelter vets.
FWIW the status quo has remained the same - shelters legally own the animals in their care, and thus, as owners, shelter vets are not regulated by the Vet Board for the care they give their animals.
The commission is just stating the facts. I don't think they are advocating any change in law. (again from the quoted text).
The fact remains that state veterinarian boards were going after shelter practitioners, the court then gtanted shelters relief - on the basis of the Act - then the Commission generated the post-mortem on the Act.
There seems to be no recommendation from the quoted text?
All sunset laws do is turn state agencies into lobbying and patronage companies.
Sounds like bureaucracy for bureaucracy…
I think the article is very well argued, and if this board's closure notice is allowed to stand then it will infringe on Californian's right to simply draw a map of their home or business. His business isn't offering site surveys and doesn't proclaim to, and to be honest even Google Maps/Bing/Apple could be at risk if this board's ability to close/ban this were allowed (they do show property boundaries after all).
The biggest problem they're going to run into is: Who has deeper pockets? Since often in the US legal system that can decide the winner/loser.
The site itself includes a disclaimer (“THIS IS NOT A LEGAL SURVEY, NOR IS IT INTENDED TO BE OR REPLACE ONE.” ).
However, at least on the sample plans the site shows[1][2], there does not seem to be any disclaimer. A reasonable person may be mislead into thinking that the plans produced by that website are legal surveys - they have the appearance of a typical surveyor/engineer produced CAD drawing.
In all the engineering drawings I've seen, the title block is essentially your only way of ensuring contextual information is always associated with the drawing. Including relevant disclaimers in the title block is critical.
If the sample drawings shown are representative of the output of the site, they could do a better job by including reasonable disclaimers on each drawing.
[1] https://www.mysiteplan.com/en-ca/products/simple-plot-plan?v...
[2] https://www.mysiteplan.com/products/plot-plan-showing-struct...
If a schematic needs to be from a licensed professional, the burden is to demonstrate that it is.
Sometimes it is appropriate to require a license professional to certify something, other times it is not
Right in the middle of the landing page, the site also states 'Our Site Plans are Non-Certified (Read More)' in the same list as their selling points. And their explanation of what this means is simple and to the point: https://www.mysiteplan.com/pages/certified-site-plans
Users of the site are very plainly advised. And if they submit those plans to local authorities or whoever, the people who evaluate them are competent to notice whether or not the plans are signed by a licensed surveyor. I'm not sure who you think is at risk of harm here.
This is not a thing when it comes to regulated professional services. A provider doesn't get to choose whether they "accept" liability, or be "just a convenience".
I am not a lawyer, and this isn't legal advice, but I think your interpretation of constitutional law is obviously incorrect.
If someone needs a certified survey from a licensed professionals, they are not offering that service.
If someone want a drawing of their lot in proximity, something that a homeowner could do with a tape measure, or even just guess at, they will do it for you.
I recently used AcreValue.com to find the rough location of some remote timberland my late mother owned. I've never been there, nor has any other living member of my family. My niece is in the area, and wanted to go out and take a look at it (mainly to make sure no one has set up a meth lab out there or something). The map from AcreValue is perfectly adequate to navigate her to the area.
Now, we would be foolish to use that map in lieu of a professional surveyor if we were planning on building a wall around it or something, but we're not doing that, or anything like it.
I'm guessing from what people are saying that is that the AcreValue site is also illegal under California law.
Edit: I can tell that it's adequate because I also looked at the official county plat map, and can see that the AV map is congruent with the plat map, in respect to the (dirt) roads and geographic features of the surrounding area. I don't (and shouldn't) need to hire a surveyor for this.
For example you could hire an architect, ask them to do a preliminary sketch, fire them, add an extra floor to the design, and then construct the building based on that design. You cannot expect them to take liability.
Seems like the big mapping companies you mention should file amicus briefs in his favour.
Unless I'm missing something these sort of license laws only apply to providing services to other people. So cut your own hair, diasgnos your own illness, build your own kitchen, etc. but do it for someone else, especially for money, and you need a license.
As far as drawing maps goes I don't see it as any less worthy than other things we regulate. Boundaries tend to be important and those doing so for money should probably demonstrate a basic level of competence.
A discrepancy between requirements from building departments and planning and platting departments is par for the course. Everywhere I have ever lived, the building department will accept an informal description of boundaries to determine whether or not a plan interferes with setback requirements, while a planning department or platting recorder will demand an officially certified survey to determine the actual parcel boundaries.
I think this site's "If your building department DOES NOT require a Surveyor, Engineer, or Architect Stamp our plans are just what you need!" disclaimer is quite spot-on and it is rather frustrating that they are getting targeted.
My own county (Boulder County, CO) offer a county-sponsored GIS service which is not surveyor-approved, with similar disclaimers. My surveyed parcel at my current household differed from their assessment by 5% and at my last household, by 10%. While this is a significant number, for building purposes, it isn't unreasonable - just a few degrees either way in the projection of edges. I think these sites should be allowed to stand with the acceptance that a suit based on the material contained in these sites would be bogus.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33185765
Maybe all they need to do is add the disclaimer to the generated maps?
It is a 1fa issue that I can say "This appears to be my property and I'm going to put my gardens in this area around my house".
And, you (royal, not personally) are an idiot if you trust non-authotarative pictures of boundaries for a real legal survey, and then do major things based on that.
There are times when a certification is a good idea, where safety is a concern for example. In these cases it seems it's just salty "engineering" boards that want to hold on to their archaic ways of doing things.
If the maps are marketed as "informal", how do they have a valid case against him? This carries the stench of abusive protectionist harassment, leveraging massive Board resources against an individual.
What am I overlooking?
if you think this is not possible or is unlikely, I recommend you work in a small office somewhere for a year. even the slightest hint of an idea that a person has power over you will often make that person absolutely drunk with power.
what this Engineering organization is trying to do was tried a few years ago by some other Engineer organization somewhere and the engineer organization in question said something to the effect of "only engineers are allowed to do this, and we say who gets to call themselves engineers" and they lost quite resoundingly. it was wonderful, truly.
in that state and that field, neither of which I can remember now (getting old) anyone can say they are an engineer and be hired to do the work that this organization for engineers controlled for so long. they got a big head, they squeezed the wrong person, and they lost it all in court. they no longer are able to control who can call themselves an engineer; the state redefined it as "one who practices engineering" or something like that.
I hope that happens in this case as well.
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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33185765
Edit: "diagrams lying around my house" aren't relevant as you're not trying to sell them.
Sad thing is, it lines up in their 2001 imagery, but 2017 is off by a few feet.
Are these "stamps in the grounds" actual survey pegs placed by licenced surveyors working from the official Lands & survey database after having triangulated from previously placed officvial survey pegs?
Misalignment of geomosaiced air photo images | poor rectification is one thing (and not altogether uncommon) but that's a world away from ground based triangulated surveying backed by dual GPS against ground station modern survey techniques (which extend from a time before air photo surveys became common).
The ortho imagery has the front of the properties too far back on one side of the street and too far forward on the other, so it is not a single property line issue. The data set [1] used has tolerances listed but it is frustrating that it translates to a survey.
Some examples of not my house. [2]
1. https://lariac-lacounty.hub.arcgis.com/pages/lariac5-documen...
2. https://imgur.com/a/Nqkdkjj
I think there is a fundamental limitation in US society that the only people that can challenge laws are the people that are damaged by them. You can't just look at the law in passing and take these exact obvious arguments to court because you have a little free time and money. You need free time, money, and a whole government agency coming after you trying to take all of your free time and money! What kind of power dynamic is that!?
We need a more comprehensive check and balance to get these laws in front of courts way earlier than that. I have some ideas if anyone is interested.
I'm a little interested, if you want to share a follow-up comment, but I had an idea of my own that I wanted to share too.
My vague understanding is that in international law, there is a mechanism by which, in theory, a nation can take up the grievance of an individual citizen and elevate that issue into a case that the nation itself has an interest in, which is then subject to the international legal processes that exists between nations.
Applying this principle within a nation, would mean that individual sub-national units (i.e. states, in the case of the US) would have standing to bring cases against other states or the federal government to the Supreme Court on behalf of individual citizens, even those resident in other states (presumably with the check and balance that the state legislature or executive bringing the case has to agree that the citizen's grievance was worth wasting their own state's tax payers' money to fight).
Of course this could lead to a tidal wave of unnecessary culture-war lawsuits being filed, as blue states and red states tried to undermine each other's laws, but I think that objection is somewhat misdirected. The real problem would be either that courts are understaffed / underfunded, or that it's somehow good that only the richest people with the most time on their hands can afford to challenge unconstitutional laws. Neither of those are really good reasons for disallowing the mechanism that I'm suggesting.
A concept that I heard about in at least one other country is that Governors and Presidents have an additional option when the legislature passes a bill to their desk. Instead of "sign" or "veto", there is at least an additional option of punting it directly to the constitutional court.
(Another tweak is that the constitutional court is not simultaneously an appellate court.)
and then of course is what I observed about who can have standing to bring something to the courts at all. I think one shouldn't need to be harmed already to bring a case to review.
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