Oh no, not a variance!

Mail-Jewish has a nice discussion going about halachaic issues in obeying the law of the land. One writer wrote “Since pulling a permit also involves a permit fee, avoiding a permit is tantamount to stealing from the city …” I wonder whether we should call it stealing when the city’s cost of processing the permit exceeds the permit’s price. And that reminds me of a wonderful anecdote which I hope you will enjoy. Here’s a case where the government would definitely have preferred NOT to be paid for the permit…

I was working in a small town a few miles from my home, at a small startup, a subsidiary of Exxon. Our offices were at a place called “Research Park”, a bundle of buildings full of small computer companies, many other small businesses hoping to make a big buck, a restaurant, a few lawyers and accountants, and a place selling cars. We were developing new kinds of office computers and at one point we needed to build six identical computers, so we advertised for someone with hardware manufacturing experience. This brought a call to our CEO from the local government.
“You can’t manufacture in Research Park,” he was told, “You’re not zoned for manufacture.”
Our CEO explained that we were just doing research into office computing, and maybe some development..
“You’re not zoned for research in Research Park,” he was told. “You can’t do development there either. You’re just zoned for accounting and lawyer offices and that sort of thing.”
Research Park had ALWAYS been full of computer companies. And the very name! Our CEO was really puzzled. “What about all the other computer companies?” he asked.
“Look,” said the government official. “Just don’t make it look like you’re manufacturing alright? I don’t want get into the other stuff.”

Well this may surprise you, but apparently Exxon is scrupulous about the law of the land. We applied for a zoning variance. The application was unhappily accepted. It took eighteen months to get our variance, during which time Exxon’s lawyers and the town’s lawyers spent more time than any of them wanted to spend. Throughout the whole process, I think the town was afraid that all the other companies were going to ask for variances too. But I believe none of them did.