Remember when Gov. Gavin Newsom paid for a cable television ad in Florida, touting California as some beacon of freedom?
“Join us in California, where we still believe in freedom,” Newsom said. “Freedom of speech, freedom to choose, freedom from hate, and the freedom to love.”
The idea that the COVID-19 lockdown dystopia of Newsom’s California was some freedom fest was always laughable. No state does more to make it harder for residents to make a living than California.
Just ask Ryan Crownholm.
Crownholm is a Los Angeles entrepreneur who created MySitePlan.com, a website that helps people create site drawings that many cities require for a building permit. Crownholm’s site uses publicly available data, such as Google Maps, to create images of property that users of his website can then overlay their own drawings on to.
In a state like California where housing is unaffordable, using technology to make it cheaper for people to improve their properties seems like a win-win, right?
Not in Newsom’s California. Crownholm is being fined $1,000 by the state government for the crime of illegally practicing land surveying without a license. According to Newsom’s government, to “depict the location of property lines, fixed works, and the geographical relationship thereto” requires a license, which Crownholm does not have.
Never mind that many city building departments throughout the state accept plan drawings from nonsurveyors and even give instructions on their websites on how homeowners can create their own site drawings. And for those building departments that do require site drawings by a licensed surveyor, Crownholm has a clear disclaimer on his website which says, “ THIS IS NOT A LEGAL SURVEY, NOR IS IT INTENDED TO BE OR REPLACE ONE.”
Crownholm is fighting Newsom’s government in court, arguing that he has a First Amendment right to help Californians draw lines on maps.
But this is too much freedom for Newsom to allow Californians to have. One can only hope that Crownholm will prevail in court.
