Lawn Gone Liberty: The Update

It's finally spring.

Better mow your lawn.

If you don't, your town government may fine you thousands of dollars a day.

Worse, if you can't pay the fine, they may confiscate your home.

Six years ago, in Dunedin, Florida, Jim Ficken let his grass grow.

His mom had died, and he'd left town to take care of her estate. He asked a friend to cut his grass, but that friend died, too!

In the two months Ficken was away, his grass grew taller than 10 inches.

City bureaucrats started fining him.

But they didn't tell Ficken that. When he finally got back, there was no notice of the $500-a-day fine. Only when he ran into a "code enforcement officer" did he learn he'd be getting "a big bill."

When the bill came, it was for $24,454.

Ficken quickly mowed his lawn. Then the city tacked on another $5,000 for "non-compliance."

Ficken didn't have that much money, so city officials told him they would take his home.

Fortunately, Ficken discovered the libertarian law firm, the Institute for Justice, which fights government abuse.

IJ lawyer Ari Bargil took on Ficken's case, arguing that the $30,000 fine violates the Constitution's limits on "excessive bail, fines, and cruel punishments."

But a judge ruled that the fine was "not excessive."

Of course, judges are just lawyers with robes. Often they are lawyer/bureaucrats who've become very comfortable with big government.

I call a $30K penalty for not cutting your lawn absurdly excessive,

IJ attorney Bargil told local news stations, "If $30,000 for tall grass in Florida is not excessive, it is hard to imagine what is."

Dunedin's politicians often impose heavy fines for minor transgressions.

One resident told us, "They fined me $32,000 for a hole the size of a quarter in my stucco ... For a lawn mower in my yard ... They fine people they can pick on ... and they keep picking on them."

It happens elsewhere, too.

Charlotte, North Carolina, fined a church for "excessive pruning."

Danbury, Connecticut, charged a resident $200,000 for leaving his yard messy.

Bargil notes, "It's pretty apparent that code enforcement is a major cash cow."

In just five-and-a-half years, Dunedin collected $3.6 million in fines.

But by then, I and others had noticed. We were reporting on Dunedin's heavy fines.

So did the politicians sheepishly acknowledge that they had milked citizens with excessive fines and give the money back?

Of course not. They hired a PR firm. That cost taxpayers another $25,000 a month.

Politicians care mostly about themselves.

After The Institute for Justice filed a second lawsuit, Dunedin agreed that Ficken could pay less: $10,000.

Still too much, but Ficken agreed.

"Our Founders," says Bargil, "recognized that the ability to fine is the ability to cripple. It's one of the ways, other than incarceration, that government can really oppress."

Government routinely oppresses. For six long years, Dunedin's politicians oppressed Jim Ficken.

Every Tuesday at JohnStossel.com, Stossel posts a new video about the battle between government and freedom. He is the author of "Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media."

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