There remains a great deal to occupy the minds, passions and dwindling time of the Colorado General Assembly, but most of the conversations recently have tended to come back to the perennial contentions surrounding the politics of land use and housing costs.

These contentions are all wrapped up neatly in an enormous package dubbed SB 213, which takes on the task of restructuring land use policy in the entire state, with the exclaimed goal of producing more affordable housing.

What is most striking about the bill is not its scope (neither the General Assembly nor the Governor’s Office shy from sweeping gestures) but the manner in which it seems to put two traditionally conservative allegiances in conflict.

On one hand the bill ostensibly attacks the issue of restrictive zoning. There is little question that high home prices are largely a function of factors extrinsic to the pure economics of building a dwelling. Overly restrictive zoning laws have the effect of reducing the amount of land on which houses can be built; it boils down to the indefeasible factor of land scarcity –  labor and capital can be increased, land cannot.

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It is not only restrictive zoning laws that shrink the available supply of land and drive costs up. The cumulative effect of progressively stricter and expansive building codes, for instance, and the cost of maintaining litigation insurance against the omnipresent, looming threat of lawsuit – costs which are divorced from the impartial discipline of the market – continue to render the construction of low-cost condominiums and the like a fantasy.

SB 213 purports to tackle the zoning issue by bringing in the state to override local zoning rules. But here we run into conflict with another tenet of conservative thought, the Burkean case for a society shaped from below, from its local elements; the concept that economic decisions ought to be made at the lowest feasible level. This is not to be confused with a blind fetish for “local control” – there is considerable emphasis placed on the word “feasible”. International trade and the air traffic control system, for instance, are naturally federal obligations. Resource extraction and pesticide regulation are properly state functions (neither mineral deposits nor crop diseases pay much attention to jurisdictional boundaries). Land use decisions, accordingly, are best left to local political authorities. Roger Scruton beautifully termed this conservative affection for local governance “oikophilia,” love of home.

There are four items which deserve comment concerning the approach 213 takes. First is the observation it places the debate at the wrong level. While zoning and permitting laws do not necessarily vitiate the right to private property, they certainly possess the ability to undermine it, if used improperly. On the other hand the case can be strongly made as to the amenities of such laws, properly applied. It is, therefore, a struggle which properly belongs at the local level, where competing local interests can have it out.

Second, there is an inherent risk in placing that sort of authority over truly local matters in the hands of the state. The state is established to attend to matters of statewide concern, like those mentioned above – most things related to governance, in fact, are not expressly assigned to the federal government in the Constitution. But granting state oversight of local land use risks inviting ideological opportunism; while today the appetite may be for emancipating property owners from zoning restrictions, who is to say that tomorrow it will be for abandoning growth altogether? Does Grand Junction or Fort Collins really want Denver telling them they should plant trees instead of building houses?

Third is the simple fact this approach is not going to solve the problem it sets out to. Unless the organic problems are addressed at the appropriate levels, housing prices will not come down. Yes, there is work to do on certain local zoning laws. But we could liberate any given jurisdiction from any and all zoning rules, and allow sex shops, bars and gun stores to be built on school playgrounds, and it will not dent the housing problem until the state finally and permanently remedies construction defect litigation, and rolls back the layers of building codes it has steadily imposed on the industry, which have at least as great an impact as local zoning laws.

Finally, there is the constitutional question, ably raised in committee by the indefatigable Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer (R-Brighton). How will they address that issue? The short answer is they will find a way. Colorado courts have proven very resourceful in transcending Constitutional questions.

Kelly Sloan is a political and public affairs consultant and a recovering journalist based in Denver.