>now - "ex post facto" laws are prohibited by the US Constitution. Any
>reasonably competent lawyer could have won this one half asleep.
Maybe so... but not for the cost of a $60 permit.
Actually it seems to me the Des Moines people sounded very reasonable in
agreeing to hand over the permits after the fact for a small fee. If they
were really nasty dictators, why didn't they tell him to dig out all the guy
anchors to "prove" that the correct amount of concrete was used, for
example? They probably have the power to have done that, but did not demand it.
Besides, when one of those famous Iowa tornadoes takes down the towers
someday, his insurance company will not be able to wiggle out of payment on
some phoney grounds that they were not installed correctly. He will have
permits in hand to prove good engineering.
Those papers seem like a bargain to me.
Maybe the biggest mistake a ham wanting to build a new tower can make is to
walk away empty-handed from a building-and-safety office, with only a verbal
indication that "you don't need a permit for those things here." I wouldn't
call that freedom.
K6NA
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