Columbia Spectator on the Manhattanville CBA... but what about the 197-a plan?

The Columbia Spectator published an article last week about the Columbia University CBA, going over the criticisms of the CBA process outlined in the New York City Bar Association's recent report on CBAs. The article does a decent job of recapping the CBA's negotiation, but it leaves out any mention of the preexisting community-based 197-a plan that Columbia basically got the city to throw out (with a whole lot of lobbying). And that's an important consideration in the Columbia case, since it's a lot easier to portray the CBA as community-supported when you leave out the fact that the community's own plan was rejected in favor of different plans put forward by the elite and well-connected university.

Planning conflicts in Pittsburgh

The 2008 Hill District CBA, which covers the new Penguins arena (the Consol Energy Center) in Pittsburgh, included a provision funding the creation of a master plan for the Hill District. The Penguins were supposed to hold off on further development plans so long as the master plan was finished by February, 2010, but the community coalition missed that deadline because of delays in hiring a consultant.

At a community meeting earlier this month, Penguins officials presented preliminary plans for 1,200 units of housing, nearly 100,000 square feet of retail space, and a 150-room hotel. The team's representatives say that their plans are consistent with development principles adopted by the Hill Planning Forum, a group made up of community stakeholders. Nevertheless, Penguins officials are reluctant to give the community a larger role in the development process, and they stated at the meeting that community representatives would not have a role in drafting RFPs (requests for proposals). The Penguins are still planning on delaying submission of their plans until after the Hill District's master plan is completed, but whether this is a sincere attempt to involve the community in the development process isn't clear. As one of the Penguins' officials explained during the meeting, the team doesn't want to involve the community in the RFP process in part because it doesn't want to "impose requirements" on developers.

ACLU Tests Constitutionality (i.e. Quality) of Court-Appointed Criminal Defense

Prior to the Civil War, Michigan was one of the first states to get in on the ground-floor of providing legal defense to the poor and the accused.  The constitutional right of the accused to an attorney was enshrined in the seminal case of Gideon v Wainwright, 372 US 335 (1963).

Things have changed.  Michigan has gone from the "first-floor" to the cellar in terms of the quality of court-appointed criminal defense; at least as measured in terms of compensation.

The ACLU is challenging the public defender system in the case of Duncan v State of Michigan.  The ACLU's brief argues that the quality of court-appointed legal defense in Berrien, Muskegon and Genesse Counties falls below the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of effective legal counsel.

The case was filed in the Ingham County Circuit Court where the trial judge certified Plaintiff's case as a class-action.

Defendants Governor Jennifer Granholm and the State of Michigan are represented by the Michigan Attorney General, Mike Cox.  The AG's brief asserts that the duty to appoint and compensate public defenders falls to the local circuit court judges.

The AG brought a motion for summary disposition which was denied by the trial court.  The court, however, granted the AG's motion to stay further proceedings until appeals from the decision were decided.  The Court of Appeals affirmed the Ingham Circuit Court's rulings granting class certification and denying summary disposition.  In a lengthily dissent, Appeals Judge William C. Whitbeck asserted that the case, which he described as a "fundamental challenge to Michigan’s system for operating and funding legal services for indigent criminal defendants" essentially could result in an unconstitutional violation of the separation of powers doctrine.

The case is scheduled for oral argument before the Michigan Supreme Court on April 13, 2010.  Meanwhile, the state legislature is considering HB 5676 which seeks to establish a state-wide public defender system, along with the essential funding.  The sponsors of the proposed legislation, Bob Constan and Justin Amash acknowledge they will have a very tough time to get this type of funding approved in the midst of the sustained economic downturn.

Never short on resources, however, the ACLU is bringing their game, on this same issue, to the United States Supreme Court in the case of Vermont v Brillon.

The ACLU's suit, and the proposed legislation have attracted national attention.  (The Law Blogger picked-up on a National Public Radio feature that addressed the critical state of Michigan's court-appointed criminal defense.)  The most likely result of all these efforts will be, "more of the same".  The defense bar will continue to soldier on, as underpaid under-resourced champions of the constitution.

Defendants, for the most part, will continue getting convicted.  No tears shed here, unless the accused is truly innocent.  Then it's a real tragedy as well as a threat to our individual rights and the criminal justice system.

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New York isn't the only place with CBA problems after all

San Francisco has the Hunter's Point CBA, which was called a "big victory" when it was finalized in 2008.

But now there's another CBA campaign on in the city by the bay, and it doesn't look so promising. The controversy concerns a 550-bed megahospital being proposed by Sutter Health, which will allow Sutter to reduce its acute care services at the existing St. Luke's hospital. St. Luke's is located in the Mission, which has a large Latino population, and two coalitions have formed to address issues relating to health justice and equity. As Randy Shaw explains in a BeyondChron article, "the California Nurses Association and virtually every health care advocacy group is fighting save St. Luke's Hospital and force Sutter to sign an enforceable agreement protecting the community".

Sounds like a strong campaign. Except that the healthcare workers' union, SEIU-UHW, undercut the coalition by signing its own agreement with Sutter. In the Side Letter, the union agreed to publicly and privately support the project, and it authorized Sutter to assign union employees to outreach work building support for the project.

According to Shaw, the community's reaction to SEIU-UHW's side deal has been mostly negative. The vice president of the other healthcare workers' union, NUHW, explained that "there is no way NUHW would have made such a deal with Sutter. We always felt it important to work with the community regarding this project.” SEIU-UHW, according to Shaw, has become disengaged from other healthcare advocacy groups in the city and from elected officials. Although the San Francisco Building Trades are siding with SEIU-UHW, "the Building Trades supports virtually every construction project proposed in San Francisco, and – unlike SEIU-UHW – does not claim protecting patient care and health equity as part of its mission."

NYC Comptroller Liu's CBA task force & more to come from the DuBois Bunche Center

Last week, New York City Comptroller John Liu announced the formation of his task force on Public Benefit Agreements. (Why he chose the "PBA" nomenclature is unclear.) According to Liu's website, "The Task Force will develop recommendations on best practices and draft a framework for a more effective and equitable process to guide public subsidized economic development projects in the City of New York, including accountability and enforcement mechanisms that would apply when tax dollars, rezonings, and other public resources are used to facilitate private development."

The task force has more than 30 members, and Eliot Brown at the New York Observer says that it has "lefty bent." Norman Oder at the Atlantic Yards Report breaks down the membership "through an AY lens" and points out that three of the task force members support the much criticized Atlantic Yards CBA.

One of those three task force members is Roger Green, the executive director of the DuBois-Bunche Urban Policy Center (and former New York Assembly member). The DBC announced that it will be undertaking its own study of CBAs, which will "review the origins of the various Community Benefits Agreements to determine their effectiveness in enhancing minority business and equal employment opportunities."

What should be done about these messy CBAs?

CBAs have been a big issue in New York lately, ever since New York City Comptroller John Liu announced his intent to reform the process a few weeks ago. Just this week, the New York City Bar Association issued a report that's very critical of CBAs, calling for the agreements to be excluded from the land use approval process.

Amid all of this CBA to-do, it can be easy to lose sight of the ultimate goals of the community benefits movement, viz., making development more responsive to community needs, ensuring that the benefits and burdens of development are more equitably distributed, requiring more transparency and responsibility in the distribution of subsidies, encouraging affordable housing construction, ensuring the creation of quality jobs, creating programs to help local employees find employment and progress in their fields, protecting small and local businesses that strengthen local economies, etc.

CBAs are just one way to achieve some of these goals. But they're certainly not the only way, and they're often not the best way. The problems with New York's CBAs are symptoms of deeper problems in the way that development and planning happen in New York City, and regulating CBAs won't fix these problems. What's needed is better and more transparent planning, and a different understanding of how CBAs are supposed to fit into the development approval process.

Is regulating CBAs even feasible?

CBA advocates have generally eschewed legislative CBA requirements because of the difficulty of defining "the community." To illustrate, CBA legislation was proposed (but not passed) in Allegany County, Pennsylvania, in 2008. It would have required developers to meet with community representatives, but it didn't really explain how those representatives would be chosen. A law recently passed in Washington D.C. similarly hedges on the question of who represents the community. It's not hard to imagine how competing community groups could end up in counterproductive arguments over this issue, with the excluded group(s) claiming that the developer didn't adequately consult the "community" because it didn't meet with them. Just consider the Atlantic Yards CBA, or the SugarHouse CBA. In both cases, opposition groups weren't involved in CBA talks, and in both cases (although indirectly in the case of SugarHouse) the community groups that did participate had financial reasons to do so. So was the "community" really involved?

So, you might ask, what about making the local government or some agency responsible for selecting the relevant community? Well, to begin with, as the NYC Bar Association points out, there are due process and takings problems when CBAs are mandated or considered as part of the planning process. Indeed, the planning commissions in New York City and Pittsburgh have both recognized that CBAs are not an appropriate factor to consider in the planning approval process. Nevertheless, they can be attached to public subsidies and government property disposition policies, and this will include a lot big projects.

Where subsidies or government properties (rather than development approvals) are involved, a CBA requirement raises fewer red flags, and in this context, having local government involvement might work. But you still run the risk that political forces will favor certain community representatives over others, and that could result in unfair results and obviate the potential for disadvantaged community members to band together and use a CBA to gain a seat at the table.

There are other questions. Would CBA legislation prescribe negotiating rules? The proposed Allegany County law would have required the developer to meet with community groups three times, but beyond that it called for no particular negotiation structure. Under a Connecticut law that regulates CBA-like agreements, the developer has to file a "meaningful [public] participation plan" before meeting with the local government to determine whether a CBA is necessary. Other regulations might require the developer to negotiate in good faith, maybe using negotiation rules fashioned after the National Labor Relations Act requirements for collective bargaining (although I've never seen anything like this for CBAs).

It's also worth considering that even if you regulate CBAs, there will always be the opportunity for developers and community coalitions to enter into side deals and call them something else (like maybe a Neighborhood Benefits Agreement or a Good Neighbor Agreement). While people often talk about CBAs as a new tool, the fact is that they're just bilateral contracts with social justice goals and a different name. And even if it might be inappropriate for planning boards and development agencies to consider these sorts of private agreements, negotiated outside of formal "CBA" regulations and not submitted as part of the development application, it's not like planning boards and development agencies exist in a vacuum, and the same PR that makes CBAs a useful persuasive device will make other CBA-like-agreements useful too.

What about existing land use regulations?

The New York City Bar Association has wisely discerned that the biggest problem with CBAs may not be the lack of regulation but the failure of existing land use and planning regulations to meet communities' needs.

To take New York City as an example, there are numerous changes that could make the planning process more inclusive and more responsive to neighborhood concerns. The city could provide funding to Community Boards to create 197-a neighborhood plans, and the city could enact regulations to make it more difficult for developers to receive approval for projects that are inconsistent with adopted 197-a plans. Community Boards could also be given a more significant role in the city's Uniform Land Use Review Procedure. Currently, Community Boards get to hold a public hearing, review development applications, and then submit a recommendation to the borough president and the planning commission. That recommendation is purely advisory, however. Requiring planning commission decisions overturning a Community Board's recommendation to be passed by a supermajority, as they must when they overturn a borough president's recommendation, would help give the Community Boards more say in developments impacting their neighborhoods.

Developers could also be required to submit better information in their Land Use Review Applications, which could help everybody in the process to better understand projects' impacts. Community Impact Reports have been recommended for this purpose (see here for information on similar "Economic Impact Reviews"). These reports require the developer to provide a cost-benefit analysis and to assess employment impacts, housing impacts, neighborhood needs, and sustainability issues. Developers could also be required to provide subsidy disclosures. Of course, all of this information should be posted on the city's website and should be easily accessible offline, such as by providing copies to libraries. That being said, the application process itself should be more open and transparent, especially in the earliest stages. Community Board representatives, for example, should be invited to pre-application meetings between developers and the Department of City Planning. Even better would be regulations providing for a pre-application public hearing.

Finally, a lot of CBA provisions deal with policy issues that might be appropriate for city-wide legislation. Living wage laws, targeted hiring requirements, big box restrictions, green building requirements, and inclusionary housing ordinances all seek to address problems that are covered by a lot of CBAs. Enacting these sorts of ordinances makes the process more predictable for developers and ensures that these policies are applied to all development projects (or at least all projects covered by the legislation), and not just developments located in neighborhoods with strong community coalitions.

The importance of planning

Good planning, anyway, could help developments to provide more benefits to the communities where they're located. As Washington D.C. planner Richard Layman points out, CBAs are justified in part because projects too frequently only have a "trickle down" effect on their communities; but "part of the 'failure' is the failure to coordinate investment and improvements, and to ensure that a project fully connects to the neighborhood and/or commercial district beyond the confines of the lot lines of the development."

Comprehensive planning forces cities to consider where development benefits are needed before developers come in promising tax revenues, new jobs and affordable housing, and cheery project renderings where it's always sunny and there's never any traffic. Layman continues:

Having a structured conversation about community benefits is a necessary first step in the consideration of a wider-range of public-private partnerships organized around land use and development that is designed to yield neighborhood and/or city-wide stabilization and improvement benefits.... In order to craft agreements, first neighborhoods... must work together to develop a set of neighborhood priorities, and ensure that proffers are directed only to those items which the community agrees are important.

This sort of planning--at least in jurisdictions where land use decisions have to be consistent with a comprehensive plan--gives developers some notice as to the type of amenities they should include in an application in order to get a project approved. It also gives communities more leverage before the planning board when they oppose projects that aren't consistent with the existing plan. And when cities facilitate community-based planning, they help to provide a role for neighborhood residents and business owners, which can in some cases obviate the need for a CBA. The Melrose Commons development in the Bronx is one example. The Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative in Roxbury, Massachusetts, is another.

Comprehensive planning and formalized planning approval procedures can also help to ensure that development amenities are more equitably distributed. Layman says that "communities that are better organized and have more resources end up getting more (or some) benefits, while under-organized communities get little to nothing in terms of benefits from new development occurring within the neighborhood." A 1988 report by the NYC Bar Association similarly explained that "Unrelated amenities... can satisfy needs of the favored community which should not receive priority when viewed on a city-wide basis, while leaving unmet significantly more important needs elsewhere. Communities which lack construction projects are thereby short changed." The more recent NYC Bar Association report reaffirms these points:

The community negotiating the CBA may capture benefits that would have gone instead to the broader community if CBAs were not allowed. Or the community may bargain for one type of benefit, and thereby reduce the ability of elected officials in the public approval process to get a different kind of benefit that would have been more appropriate for the City as a whole.

Further, while the benefits incorporated into CBAs may address important needs, such as affordable housing, critics contend that these issues should be confronted citywide, rather than on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis. A citywide approach would be more likely to channel resources into the neighborhoods that need them most, which may not be the neighborhoods that happen to be getting development....

A citywide approach to the City’s needs is likely to be more comprehensive, better planned, and better integrated with the City’s other initiatives.... Diversion of benefits from the City as a whole to the host neighborhood also may result in greater inequality among the City’s neighborhoods. Many neighborhoods within the City will not be zoned for major development or will not have the infrastructure or underused land required for such development. Those communities may share in any benefits of development that are obtained in the public approval process. If CBAs divert benefits from the City as a whole, however, those neighborhoods may see little of the benefits from the City’s growth.

The report mentions as an example the affordable housing commitment in the Atlantic Yards CBA. While the affordable housing promise is superficially very attractive, the fact is that it's conditioned on the availability of scare affordable housing bonds, and the result is that it may become a monopoly on affordable housing financing in the years to come. This kind of result isn't fair, and it's not the ultimate goal of the community benefits movement--CBAs are there to fill the gaps, but they're only a means to an end, and local governments should be working to ensure that the benefits (and burdens) of development are equitably distributed.

Another example is the supermarket fight involving the Kingsbridge Armory CBA (which was never finalized because the project wasn't approved). The CBA coalition wanted the developer to promise not to lease space to any grocery store that would compete with the supermarket across the street. The supermarket exclusion was intended to protect existing unionized jobs, but it also could have had negative effects on the larger group of residents who might shop at a new grocery store for higher quality food and a better selection of healthy foods. The supermarket exclusion might have also had unintended consequences were the existing supermarket to close; then there would be no unionized jobs and no selection of food. I'm not saying that one side or the other was right, but this is the type of issue that should resolved within the context of a comprehensive plan, and not by community coalitions that might be biased or unrepresentative of the relevant community.

Perhaps most importantly, formal planning ensures a level of democracy and accountability that you can't always ensure in the CBA process. Yes, many CBA coalitions do excellent work. But some don't. When amenities are decided on as part of the formal planning process, however, you avoid secret negotiations and ensure that everybody at least has an opportunity to participate.

What else can be done to give some integrity to the CBA process?

To start, CBAs need to be more transparent. Local governments should require all CBAs considered during the project/subsidy approval process to be publicly available, and if the developer negotiates an agreement and doesn't include it in its project application, it shouldn't get any special consideration. Even in California, where the CBA has become something of an institution, the agreements are often not easy to find. (Just go try to find a copy of the Grand Avenue or Hollywood & Highland CBAs.) Where local governments or other agencies have a role in overseeing CBAs, they should also make monitoring reports, amendments, and other CBA-related documents publicly available.

CBA regulations protecting community members and signatories could also be enacted without getting into the messy task of identifying the community. So without mandating CBA negotiations, whenever a developer submits a CBA along with its land use or subsidy application, it could be required to include certain provisions, like periodic reporting requirements, disclosure requirements, amendment procedures, and procedures for members of the public to lodge complaints regarding compliance.

Finally, if CBAs are going to be considered in the subsidy award process, state and local development agencies need to create uniform award guidelines--not just for CBAs, but also for other project aspects. Too many development agencies award subsidies on an ad hoc basis, which gives developers the upper hand. Instead, development agencies should have clear guidelines about subsidy availability that are based on the expected number of jobs and/or affordable housing units to be created, estimated tax revenue increases, sustainability and green building practices, etc. Development agencies also need to be more transparent about the subsidy application and award process (subsidy disclosures and better application requirements, as detailed above, can help in this regard), and they need to attach enforceable conditions to subsidies through the use of clawback agreements.

Buffalo Common Council supports CBA

In Buffalo, N.Y., the Common Council unanimously passed a resolution supporting a CBA for the heavily subsidized Canal Side Bass Pro project. A copy of the resolution is here. It says that the CBA will include: job quality provisions, including living wage requirements; green building requirements; provision for at least one third of the housing units to be affordable; a set aside of 75% of the non-Bass Pro business space for local and independent businesses; and local and minority hiring goals.

Child Support Still Owed When Parental Rights Involuntarily Terminated

There has been some buzz among family law practitioners this week concerning the Michigan Court of Appeals' decision in the DHS vs Beck case.

The COA held that a father, so neglectful and abusive that his parental rights were terminated, nevertheless remained obligated to pay child support for his two children.  The decision, arising from an Oakland County abuse case, will be published and thus binding on all Michigan family courts.

The father did not appeal the termination of his parental rights; only the family court's ruling that he remained obligated to pay support for his children.  On appeal, the father argued that he was denied due process because he was arbitrarily deprived of his property (i.e. his support payments).  The intermediate appellate court, however, was unimpressed, ruling that the father failed to articulate how, exactly, his due process rights were implicated.

One of the issues to arise in the Beck case was that the parental termination provisions of the Juvenile Code are silent as to the corresponding "parental responsibilities".

The Court went on to analyze the rights and duties implicated by a family court's decision to terminate parental rights while continuing to obligate support payments.  Michigan common law has long established a minor child's right to support from both parents.  The Court also recognized a parent's right to the "companionship, care, custody and management of his or her children."

In upholding the Oakland County Family Court, the COA ruled that a child's right to support cannot be bargained away in a termination proceeding.  The Beck panel decided that if the legislature had intended to terminate a parent's obligations along with his parental rights, it would have said so in the statute.

The Court also relied on it's earlier decisions that held support obligations continued in the wake of a voluntary termination or adoption.

Also of note in the dicta of the Court's decision was an express acknowledgment of the current "times of difficult financial circumstances."  The Beck panel realized that in such difficult economic times, public policy is served by not shifting all support and maintenance obligations onto the custodial parent or, in some cases, the state.

Finally, in deciding the case, the COA was careful to avoid the unintended consequence of encouraging the neglect and abuse of innocent children by seeking a parental termination.  Since an irresponsible parent cannot escape his support obligations by abusing or neglecting his children, the better interests of those children are served.

This is a sound decision by the intermediate appellate court.  Good thing the COA granted father's delayed application for leave to appeal (a discretionary appeal as opposed to an appeal of right). This case should have a positive effect on the charging and collection of child support.

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D.C. land disposition law requires CBAs (sort of)

The Washington D.C. District Land Disposition Amendment Act of 2009 states that when city property is transferred to a developer for a project requiring government assistance, the developer must submit "Any community benefits agreement between the developer and the relevant community, if any".

The law doesn't seem to require CBAs, since there might not be "any" relevant community. It raises some questions though, like can a community coalition demand a CBA when a developer doesn't want to recognize it as "the relevant community"? What if there are competing community coalitions, who decides which one (or both) is "the relevant community"?

Aside from CBAs, the law also imposes some generally applicable community benefit policies. It requires developers that purchase city land to contract with Certified Business Enterprises (local/disadvantaged businesses) for at least 35% of the project's contract dollar volume and to enter into a First Source Agreement with the city. Transparency and accountability are encouraged by requiring the mayor to prepare an economic analysis for property dispositions. The analysis must describe "The manner in which economic factors were weighted and evaluated," and it must also include a narrative explanation as to why the particular disposition method (e.g., competitive bidding, negotiated sale) was chosen.

Leila Marie Jackson Batties at the Holland & Knight law firm has prepared an article discussing the law in more detail.

Just to be clear, Mr. Carrion

I am all for the White House having an Office of Urban Affairs. But the Director, Adolfo Carrion, shouldn't be boasting about his CBAs in his official bio. It explains that during his tenure as Bronx Borough President, "Almost no project passed muster without a Community Benefits Agreement." What it doesn't explain is that the Gateway Center and Yankee Stadium CBAs didn't really involve the community, making them less like real CBAs and more like backroom political deals. It doesn't mention that the Gateway Center CBA doesn't provide for specific performance as a remedy, but only liquidated damages, or that the Yankee Stadium CBA is very likely unenforceable for lack of consideration. Nor does it mention all of the shenanigans that have gone on with the Yankee Stadium CBA, like the year and half long delay in distributing funding under the CBA, the lawsuit filed by the community fund's former lawyer and administrator alleging mismanagement of the fund, the indictment of a city council member on extortion and money laundering charges related to a procurement contract connected to the CBA, or the fact that parks promised to be built on the site of the old Yankee Stadium still haven't materialized.

It's problems like these that have contributed to the poor reputation of New York City CBAs and created precedent for developers to co-opt the CBA negotiating process. The CBAs that Carrion helped to draft and finalize also figure among the catalysts for City Comptroller John Liu's recent decision to form a task force on CBA best practices and reforms. The White House simply shouldn't be representing these agreements up as an example of good urban policy, even if only impliedly.

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CBAs and livable streets

StreetsBlog posted an article by Noah Kazis last week about how CBAs are increasingly being used to encourage livable street designs. The Longfellow CBA, which has a variety of pedestrian and transit benefits, is cited as an example, as is the residential parking permit program included in the Staples Center CBA. And even if the New York City CBAs have so far been mostly a wash, Kazis says (in part, quoting me), he points out that CBAs are here to stay, and "Where the public makes livable streets a priority, CBAs can be useful tools."

Second Amendment Litigant is Unlikely Handgun Advocate

Otis McDonald grew tired of the pattern of intimidation brought to bear upon him by some of the drug-dealing urban youth of his Chicagoland neighborhood.  At times, they would curse him and brandish their weapons just a few feet from his porch in Chicago's Morgan Park.  According to McDonald, some of these "punks" even threatened to "put him down."

Consequently, McDonald sought to even the odds by acquiring a gun, even if it meant he had to violate Chicago's anti-handgun ordinance to do it.

The 76-year old South-side Democrat, a retired grandfather and journeyman building engineer, who spent his career at the University of Chicago after serving in the military, is the petitioner in a case up for oral argument today at the United States Supreme Court.

An unlikely advocate for the right to "bear arms", at least in the organized sense, McDonald is not a card-carrying member of the NRA.  That group, however, will join him today in addressing the High Court and requesting that the handgun ban be struck down as unconstitutional.

This Blog has been tracking the case, as some of the high-crime issues underpinning Chicago's handgun ban are relevant to the communities of Southeast Michigan.  One of our earlier posts covered the lawyers arguing the case today.

There seems to be a consensus among legal professionals that Chicago's ordinance is likely to be declared unconstitutional.  Today, the City of Chicago, through it's retained Washington D.C. appellate lawyer, is expected to argue the safety interests such a ban serves in high-crime areas.

The consensus among High Court watchers that the handgun ordinance will be struck is based on the Court's recent decision striking-down a similar anti-gun law in the nation's capital.  The Supreme Court's decision in District of Columbia vs Heller, however, does not apply to the states since it arose in the District.

There are many reasons Americans feel a deep-rooted sense of righteousness when it comes to our right to possess and carry firearms.  It's in our historic genes; our national tradition.  Otis McDonald, on the other hand, acquired his taste for the right to bear arms out of good old-fashioned necessity.  In order to feel safe in his own crime-ridden neighborhood and to protect his family from local thugs, he armed himself in transgression of Chicago's gun ordinance.

As a result, Law Professor Nicholas Johnson of Fordham University claims that Otis McDonald will be immortalized as a litigant in one of the rare cases that becomes common knowledge among our citizenry and stands for a single proposition; in this case, the right to bear arms.

Local Connection:  Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox joined the NRA in filing an amicus brief in Otis McDonald's case.

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