Free Speech Attacked : Wind Farm Protection

Big Wind ,as this author identifies the new norm of Green Energy mandates from the progressives socialists in Washington, is apparently experiencing push back from the citizens. The question that remains, is this a sign of bigger things to come on stopping the government picking winners and losers in the market place, or a one off where certain individuals decide they have had enough and fourth back on their own?

Hopefully the first scenario is the wave of the future - if not then we all can subscribe to a living standard similar to that found a century and a half ago.

Right Wisconsin
Free Speech Victory
By Jerry Bader

There’s a major battle going on in Northeast Wisconsin that few people outside my part of the state have a clue about. Call it Big Wind vs. the Little Guy. And for good measure throw in a township that tried to censor citizens to protect Big Wind.

Wind turbine farms have gone up in southern Brown County in recent years and many residents have complained of illnesses they believe are related to living too closely to the turbines. Two couples, James and Barbara Vanden Boogart and Jon and Lori Morehouse put up signs on their property critical of the turbines.

The Town of Morrison claimed the signs violated a town ordinance that, as the attorney for the couples put it, placed a near-blanket prohibition on signs in residential and agricultural districts, preventing residents from placing signs with political, religious or personal messages on their own property. The families faced fines up to $200 a day for violating the ordinance. According to the families, signs supporting wind turbines were allowed to stay up while their signs were ordered taken down.  The couples spent two years trying to work with the town to change the ordinance, to no avail.

So, the Vanden Boogarts and the Morehouses filed suit in federal court, alleging their 1^st Amendment free speech rights were being violated by the township. Shortly after the suit was filed the town did amend the ordinance to allow the signs. But the Vanden Boogarts and the Morehouses pushed on with their suit, their goal now to get the township to admit publicly that it violated their free speech rights. The township responded by issuing a news release that said, in part: "As with any dispute, there is plenty of blame to go around here. In the interests of the community let’s all agree to take a break from blaming each other. We should instead focus our time, energy and money upon redeveloping the town’s ordinances governing both signs and wind energy systems. The community’s limited time and money resources would be much better spent conducting thorough legislative hearings involving legal counsel which yield lawful functional ordinances that better serve the entire community’s needs."

Plenty of blame to go around? They selectively decided who could use private property to voice a political statement and there was plenty of blame to go around? It’s clear that members of town government bought into wind turbine farms and discouraging words were going to be outlawed.
This week the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty,representing the families, announced a settlement. The Town and its insurance company agree to pay the plaintiffs $7,500 each(an amount WILL says will only partially cover their out of pocket expenses) as well as $20,000 to their attorneys in order to save the town further litigation costs. But WILL makes clear that both couples were willing to settle for much less if the Town of Morrison would admit guilt. It refused to do so.

Other property owners’ free speech rights were also violated. WILL says the lawsuit was more about them than any monetary award. From WILL’s news release:
"The plaintiffs’ goal has never been anything but to protect their community from being harmed by industrial wind turbines being built to close to people-harm already suffered in other Wisconsin towns.
There are theories why Town of Morrison officials were willing to so flagrantly violate its citizen’s free speech rights to protect Big Wind. But as WILL put it in its news release, other townships in Wisconsin should be on notice that they won’t get away with it.

Jerry Bader is a regionally-syndicated conservative talk show host in northern Wisconsin. You can find more from Jerry at jerrybadershow.com