Huh? No federal power would be ceded: this would be, were it to pass, the State allocating power that is already the State’s in a different manner than it has previously
OTOH, there are some federal issues raised; many of the things corporations might salivating over using their new public powers for would likely raise 14th Amendment issues, and the lack of an superficial arm's length relationship between government and the private actor might make it harder to deny the improper purpose than it is in the case where officials are merely covertly in the pocket of private interests.
Huh, I had exactly the opposite reaction. Ceding what amount of power to a state? The article says a company would receive the same authority that a county government already gets. That's authority the feds never had; they're not losing anything here.
Which kind of defeats the purpose. How is it a charter city if it's still subject to all the same laws that it would be if it weren't chartered? The Lübeck model wasn't based on being allowed to staff the courts -- it was based on being allowed to write the laws.
My disagreement isn't that it'd defeat the purpose of it being a charter city, if the feds don't allow it it would indeed defeat the purpose. My point is that my immediate concern is that this draft bill may be challenged in court by somebody (name a government, tribal group, nonprofit, or NIMBY cohort) on the grounds that the state doesn't have that authority to grant these rights and that it should rest with the feds.
In practice this ends up being more of a muddy issue than I'd like it to be (cough interstate commerce clause cough), but in principle, that's the law of the land.
But it does seem that this proposal isn't really the same as what we'd think of as a charter city/county. I don't think the state would be giving the corporation carte blanche to write its own independent legal system; they're still subject and subordinate to federal and state law. The only expressly weird thing about this from a government perspective is that the county would be run by a supervisory board that the corporation entirely controls (as in, the company wouldn't have to hold elections for those positions). Still, that's a very big difference and I'm very much against this whole idea.
What rights can we guarantee for individuals if they lack the right to influence there government?
I guess I'm not sure I see a big problem here. if you have a bunch of land that no one lives on and isn't currently being used for anything, you get to set up your own little county there. no one has to move there if they don't like the deal, and federal environmental protection rules would still apply. there's more than enough land to go around in nevada, if you can actually think of something worthwhile to do with it.