Trump Should Cancel New MPO Rules

One of the first things President Trump did when taking office was to block implementation of a reduction in mortgage insurance premiums that President Obama had ordered a few weeks before. Obama’s order would have reduced FHA insurance premiums by 0.25 percent of the value of the value of the loan. Since FHA’s fund balance is just 16 percent above the legal minimum, Obama’s order would have turned it from a solvent program to a money loser. By reversing Obama’s order, Trump was giving incoming HUD Secretary Ben Carson a chance to review it.

Another recent rule that Trump should cancel or postpone is a final rule on metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) that was issued on December 15. As the Antiplanner noted last October, this rule would force adjacent MPOs to either combine into one or coordinate together when writing plans. The assumption is that, if writing regional plans is good, writing super regional plans is even better.

The flaw in that assumption, of course, is the notion that writing regional plans is good. Regional planners necessarily have less information about their regions than local planners, who have less information than landowners. The idea that people with less information can do a better job of planning your property than you can do is one of the basic flaws in all government land-use planning.
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Rather than let this rule stand, the Trump administration should postpone it and write a new rule abolishing all MPO long-range planning regulations. The original purpose of MPOs was to allocate federal funds to local municipalities in a region, and that can continue until Congress abolishes MPOs entirely. But long-range plans are deeply flawed, and those flaws can’t be corrected by making the planning area larger. Although the law requires such plans, Trump can eliminate all of the rules and let each MPO decide how detailed they want their plans to be.

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

5 Responses to Trump Should Cancel New MPO Rules

  1. LazyReader says:

    Trump is by far the most social media driven President, even more so than Obama. It shouldn’t be that hard.

  2. JOHN1000 says:

    The action by Obama was done a few weeks ago. Many environmental actions were also done in the last weeks.

    If these actions were good and necessary, why wait 8 years to do this? Because they are either not needed or are deliberately intended to cause harm and problems for the citizens and the new administration. J

    So when critics complain that Trump is hurting housing, the environment etc, remember that most of what he eliminates did not exist until the very recent past (while the MSM will issue stories making readers believe that the last minute Obama regulations came along with the Ten Commandments).

  3. Sandy Teal says:

    It will be interesting to see what President Trump does. Trump obviously is NYC born, raised and a huge city booster, and yet he was elected by middle America and rural America that is the exact opposite in so many ways.

    I bet Trump will be very down on all the transit subsidies and mandates, except for NYC. Certainly he will kill off the Bullet Train ideas, especially in California.

  4. EngineerMike says:

    Absolutely right John1000!
    Thanks.

  5. EngineerMike says:

    Hi, Sandy.

    Good summary of likely actions.

    Thanks,

    Mike

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