Pennsylvania- I came across a most disturbing concept the other day. Just outside of Washington, DC there lies the community of Kentlands. http://kentlandsusa.com This is what is known as a “New Town”. A “New Town” is the more onerous extension of your basic common interest development. Not only are residential properties covenant controlled, but the entire town as well. Every property, be it residential, commercial or “public” (I use that term loosely) is bound by deed restrictions and governed under the “Business Judgment Rule”. While this concept is certainly not new (I suggest everyone read Privatopia: Homeowner Associations and the Rise of Residential Private Government by Evan McKenzie for a comprehensive history of New Towns), Kentlands has incorporated a new twist, that in my opinion, is the saddest commentary yet on just how far away from the basic principles on which this country was founded the “New Urbanists” have taken us. Even the name, Kentlands, has a vaguely Orwellian tinge to it.

 Kentlands was conceived in 1988 and according to its own website “is the most successful and largest neo-traditional New Urbanist project in North America.” If you click on the photo section (http://kentlandsusa.com/kentlands/community.php?mode=content&t=ce_content&id=5) of the website it indeed does look the part, extremely clean and welcoming, in a “Stepford Wives” sort of way.  During my “visit” to the site, I noticed something called the “Kentlands Citizens Assembly”. Aside from the fact that it sounds like something extracted from an episode of Star Trek, I was interested by the use of the word “Citizen”. In my experience HOAs had “members”, but never “citizens”. I started to search the website and came across this document, the “Kentlands Citizens Assembly Members Handbook” (http://kentlandsusa.com/kentlands/docs/MembersHandbook.pdf). Once you get by the introductory paragraphs that contain the obligatory property description and benign “corporate speak”, designed to soften the blow that results from a purchaser realizing that he or she is more employee than resident, you come to this remarkable passage: “What definitively sets Kentlands apart from other homeowners associations (HOAs), though, is its democratic system of community governance. Because HOAs must, by Maryland law be organized under the laws that regulate business corporations, they are required to be governed by a board of directors (trustees). The typical result is an essentially autocratic system of governance, one to which many homeowners object because of the lack of public participation and absence of checks and balances.” Upon reading that, I thought to myself, this should be interesting, how are they going to address that? As you start to read through this it speaks of setting up “three branches of government”.  “Kentlands has addressed some of the structural defects that are inherent in HOAs by creating a system of governance that is modeled after traditional American public government organizations. There are, in essence, three branches of government: legislative, executive, and quasi-judicial.” Sounds good so far but …  “Technically speaking, because the Kentlands Citizens Assembly is organized under the same statutes as other HOAs (legally, there is no alternative), the Board of Trustees is the final authority for most actions that can be taken by the Citizens Assembly. However, the processes by which the Board must carry out its responsibilities are designed so that first-line responsibilities for all but legislative actions are generally given to the executive and quasi- judicial branches.” Well, there you have it. The “government” is nothing more than a veneer, vainly trying to be something it is not. It continues … “To buttress the check and balance system that is built into the governance structure for Kentlands, the Assembly's legal documents provide for a President of the Assembly who is directly elected by the Citizens of Kentlands. In the typical HOA, the president of the association is elected by the board of directors. In Kentlands, with the direct election of the President by Citizens, the President's first and only political constituency is comprised of the citizenry - not the members of the Assembly's Board of Trustees, as is the case in conventional HOAs.” A distinction without a difference. In the following passages pay attention to the phrase “appointed by the President” …  “In another departure from traditional HOAs, there is no architectural review board, per se. There is a body (appointed by the President) that, in conjunction with the Community Architect, monitors community design and appearance concerns, but it has no enforcement authority – only the authority to approve or disapprove. This design and appearance monitoring body is called the Kentlands Historical Trust. Its primary responsibility is to safeguard the integrity of community design standards in a manner that is responsive to the welfare of the community and its individual Citizens, takdng into account that changes in values, needs and preferences are inevitable and can be accommodated without adversely affecting the integrity of community traditions.” “Enforcement of community codes is administered by the Board of Code Compliance (also appointed by the President). Any individual who takes issue with an action of the Board of Code Compliance may appeal its decision to the Board of Trustees. (A separate appeal body cannot be legally established under the Maryland corporate statutes under which the Kentlands Citizens Assembly is established.)” “The checks and balances nature of Kentland's governing structure removes the Board of Trustees from the onerous position that until now has been common in all HOAs: the board is legislator, policeman, judge, jury, and enforcer because it traditionally enacts codes, administers them, makes judgments on alleged infractions, and metes out disciplinary measures.” Since the President appoints everybody and they serve at his pleasure, how can that be true? It continues … “One of the most import provisions of the Kentlands Community Charter, the governing legal document for the Citizens Assembly, is the provision that all residents of Kentlands, 18 years of age and older, are eligible to vote in community elections. One does not have to own a home in order to be able to vote. There are certain issues, however, where only homeowners (referred to as Titleholders in the Kentlands legal documents) may vote. Those issues are generally defined as those matters, which are matters of right by virtue of provisions in deeds to real property. Such rights can only be changed through the participation of those who own real property in Kentlands.” Sort of an American version of the Hindu Castes … “The Kentlands Community Charter has many provisions that have proven valuable over several centuries of democratic traditions in America – notwithstanding occasional disappointments in the performance of public officials. No system run by imperfect human beings can be perfect all the time in all regards. Nevertheless, some systems are less imperfect than others. By reaching into the traditions of public interest administration, which have evolved over several centuries, the Kentlands Citizens Assembly has, perhaps, been conceived with the capacity for a little less imperfection than more recent systems of community governance.”  “Beyond the more prosaic provisions of the Kentlands Community Charter, there is a spirit that ultimately defines the intentions of the founders of the Kentlands Citizens Assembly which is intended to guide its operation for generations into the future. That spirit is embodied in the Preamble to the Charter. Like the Preamble of the U.S. Constitution, the Kentlands Preamble is intended to secure for all time a proper relationship between the rights of the individual and the rights of his or her society as encompassed by the geography that defines Kentlands.”  “The most inviolate idea behind the Kentlands Charter is the idea that Kentlands and its institutions collectively serve as a medium of opportunity contributing to each person being all he or she can be. For that to be the case, the Citizens Assembly must err when it errs, provide when it provides, give concern when it exercises concern, with the scales tipped in favor of the individual and his or her well-being.” Finally, it seems to attempt to compare itself to the United States Constitution. What follows is pretty much a collection of boilerplate declaration language that you see in almost every HOA’s documents. So, What’s The Tragedy?The tragedy is that the people who put this together have obviously, either through cynicism or ignorance, attempted to convince themselves and others that “pseudo-citizenship” and “quasi-government” can be successfully substituted for the real thing. That is the tragedy, and in a social and political context I cannot think of an outcome with more dire consequences. I am a child of the Cold War. I remember as a child and later on as a young adult the contempt with which every person of authority in my life, whether they were a political leader, teacher, parent, or public figure, used to speak of the notion of an “election” in the Soviet Union. The constant derogatory references to the “one party system” and the lack of basic human and civil rights permeated almost every political discussion of the day. The propaganda of that time constantly reminded us that we had real elections and real rights. We were free … what happened? In 1984, George Orwell describes a world where individual behavior and thought are controlled for the greater good, i.e., The State. Among the many methods used the one I find most fascinating is the idea of “New Speak”. The idea behind New Speak was simple, yet effective. By systematically reducing the number and variety of words, in time you will reduce the number and variety of people’s thoughts, since people think with language. Given enough time, the resulting diminution in an individual’s, and by extension, a society’s ability to form ideas will produce a self-enforcing “ideological landscape” that has been molded in the exact image of what the powers that be desire. This is not a new idea. The great religions of the world, in their capacity as political institutions, have been using this method of “behavior control” for millennia, with great success. Early on they realized that there are no more effective “policemen” than the people themselves, and by instilling a sense of correct vs. incorrect behavior in their followers they could maintain control with very little, if any, outside enforcement mechanisms. I submit that what Kentlands has promoted with their version of democracy is in fact and function what I have just described. It is accomplished by using the “Philosopher’s Trap”, i.e., the redefining words to fit the idea.  By creating these faux “branches of government” and presenting them as a genuine example of “a balance of power” inherit in the “real” government (although the current situation in Washington could make one wonder whether it still exists at all) they have not only operated under false pretense, but more importantly, have narrowed the variety of political thought, by effectively redefining autocratic rule as “a balance of power”. From 1984·         War is Peace·         Freedom is Slavery·         Ignorance is Strength Maybe this should be added·         Autocratic Rule is A Balance Of Power The amount of damage caused by this cannot be overestimated. In Privatopia Professor McKenzie expresses his concern about the deleterious effect on our democracy that would result from having the majority of an entire generation brought up living under the “Business Judgment Rule”. His concern is well founded.  When you combine the deception of something like the “Kentlands Citizens Assembly” with the propaganda distributed through publications produced and controlled by an HOA, i.e., “The Newsletter”, the result has the potential to produce a world very much like the one Orwell feared. The “citizens” living a lie, and knowing it, but fearful to speak out, lest they be labeled as “troublemakers”, destined to practice the fine art of Orwellian “Doublethink” as long as they live in that environment. And here is the real disturbing part … What happens when the “New Urbanists” decide to transform themselves into the “New Statists”? Sound like a joke? Well, thirty years ago who would have though that in some areas of the country it would become impossible to purchase a home that was not covenant controlled? What’s to prevent one of the state legislatures from creating a statewide “Master Association” that would annex every existing HOA? The recent Supreme Court ruling with regard to Eminent Domain clearly gives the right for the government, be it federal, state, or local to “take” property for the benefit of a privately controlled entity.  Now I am not suggesting that we are on the verge of having statewide Master Homeowner Associations. The public response to the Supreme Court’s ruling was loud and clear, so much so that many states immediately initiated legislation to prohibit such “takings”. But what about a generation brought up under the phony “democracy” practiced in Kentlands? What about the crop of citizens harvested from a thousand such places? What would their reaction be?  Given the absolute control of the media afforded to a privatized government (don’t believe it, read this http://www.sonorannews.com/archives/2006/060830-35/headline1.html) one certainly can’t depend on an HOAs brand of monochromatic news reporting to offer anything other that the lightweight pablum found in their “newsletters”. So where do the “Kentandians” prosecute the debate? Where do they get exposure to the other side of the story? Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that they will. If this misguided attempt to extricate our social and political structures from the “messiness” of true democracy is not abated, I feel that the ultimate fate of this country is to become a collection of “Kentlands” or worse, and that truly would be a tragedy. Robert MetcalfChadds Ford, PA