By Chris Powell
A tiny cluster of low-lying rocks in Long Island Sound just off the coast of Connecticut at Groton is aptly named: Mouse Island. Robinson Crusoe was more removed from civilization, but the residents of Mouse Island’s three houses, occupying lots of barely a quarter acre each, might have considered the island a good enough getaway. For they have had to generate their own electricity, bring their own fresh water, and, to return to civilization, swim, row, or motor 500 feet to the mainland.
But The Day of New London reported last week that government has just discovered the getaway and has determined that it can’t be left alone — that it needs more rules.
In a way it’s the fault of one of the islanders themselves. He decided to renovate his windows and applied to the town for a permit. If he had done the renovation without a permit, no one would have known or had reason to care. But his request prompted Groton officials to start thinking about Mouse Island.
They first thought that the island was within the zoning jurisdiction of the town’s Noank Fire District. But a review determined that the island isn’t part of the district and that the town had long left the island without zoning, the houses having been built years before adoption of the zoning code in the 1950s.
The Noank fire district’s zoning officer said that until the recent review the district had had no cause to think about zoning on Mouse Island because nobody could remember anything ever happening there.
So now Groton will undertake to write zoning regulations for the island that will leave the homeowners some flexibility while guarding against … overdevelopment.
How silly. For nothing has happened on Mouse Island for a long time because nothing else very useful or secure can be built there. Old newspaper reports say five houses on the island were destroyed by the Great New England Hurricane of 1938, and of course big coastal storms are always possible.
But Groton now may spend thousands of dollars to write regulations to guarantee that no one will do on Mouse Island anything that no one ever was going to do or would be able to do anyway. Indeed, if the regulations are ordinary, they’ll prohibit foundries, shopping malls, stadiums, amusement parks, and airports even as island residents will still be obliged to get a permit to fix a window. That’ll teach them.
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Connecticut Attorney General William Tong and the attorneys general of 41 other states last week imagined themselves coming to the rescue even more grandly than Groton’s zoning officials. Tong and his colleagues urged Congress to require social-media companies, like Facebook and Instagram, to post a surgeon general’s warning that social media can harm the mental health of young people.
As some of those other attorneys general do, Tong represents a state government that is actually so unconcerned about young people’s mental health that, in greedy pursuit of more tax revenue, it has legalized sports betting on the internet and, contrary to federal law, legalized marijuana as well — as long as it is bought from a licensed dealer and state tax is paid.
In recent years school officials increasingly have complained that children are coming to school “stoned” or consuming marijuana candies in school.
Last month the Hartford Courant quoted the executive director of the Connecticut Council on Problem Gambling, Diana Goode, as saying there has been a “huge demographic shift” in problem gamblers in the state. “We used to think that the problem gambler was the little old lady at the slot machine,” Goode said. “Now it’s the 20-something male betting on sports.”
Yes, social media can exploit the natural neurosis of youth. But social media are manifestations of freedom of speech, a constitutional right. If social media are so harmful to children, the attorneys general should ask Congress to outlaw the possession of internet-capable mobile phones by minors.
Kids get mobile phones only because their parents arrange them. Parents are where responsibility lies, but no one in politics dares to acknowledge it.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
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Chris Powell column 