Coordination: Old concept, bold new weapon for property rights

The word coordinate has been around for quite a while, since at least the mid-seventeenth century, but its application as a strategy to protect property rights is relatively new. Now, a number of communities across the nation, and a growing group here in Wisconsin, are using the concept to force federal and state agencies to coordinate, or work integrally, with them in planning land-use projects. Simply put, a mandate for government agencies to coordinate with local governments is found in most federal land-use statutes and agency regulations, and in many state statutes. According to a Standing Ground white paper published last year by the groups Stewards of the Range - a pro-property rights organization - and the American Land Foundation, coordination was first required in a federal land use statute in 1976, in the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, and has been included in every federal land use legislation since. Some years ago, attorney Fred Kelly Grant, a land use expert who has served as president of Stewards of the Range (as of July 1, Stewards and the American Land Foundation merged to form American Stewards of Liberty), recognized the little-known requirement and began to use it to preserve local governments' policy prerogatives, not to mention private property rights. It sounds deceptively simply, but it can be deceptively powerful, having scored successes ranging from the preservation of grazing season length in Modoc County, Calif., to similar triumphs in Idaho, Texas and other states. Specifically, as last fall's white paper laid out, coordination requires early notification to a local government of all actions or plans of a federal agency that will affect those units of government, as well as giving those governments meaningful input into the planning process. It also requires an agency to consider a related local government policy or plan or management action, and to make every effort possible to make the federal policy, plan or action consistent with the local one...LakelandTimes

This article just shows how far ahead of his time Dick Manning really was.