In a trend that some analysts find disturbing, more and more cities are imposing "socially-correct" agendas on citizens and local businesses. Critics of these policies point out that governments are created by citizens to serve the people, not the other way around.

• A dozen U.S. cities -- including New York, Baltimore and Los Angeles -- are requiring firms that do business with them to pay more than the national minimum wage.

• San Francisco insists that contractors offer employees' domestic partners the same benefits that workers' spouses enjoy -- and Los Angeles and New Orleans are considering similar measures.

• From Fort Worth, Tex., to Lynn, Mass., cities are restricting the use, sale and advertising of tobacco products.

• They even have foreign policy pretensions, with four North California counties now refusing to purchase goods or services from companies with ties to Burma.

Experts say businesses are getting fed up with the requirements. Promoters of the new municipal activism claim they must attack at the city level, because the federal government is becoming less friendly to their pet causes -- a claim many find hard to credit.

Meanwhile, a Fort Worth restaurateur is fighting a requirement to ban smoking in his establishment or install a $15,000 air purification system.

Source: Linda Himelstein, "Going Beyond City Limits," Business Week, July 7, 1997.

A drama now being played out in New York City illustrates perfectly just how backward and destructive municipal politics can be, according to local observers.

• Last month, the City Council refused a private company -- Brooklyn Van Lines -- the right to operate a van service because it would compete with the city's bus monopoly.

• The company has met all the city's requirements, has been approved three times by the Taxi and Limousine Commission, and filed 938 petitions from residents and businesses establishing that the service is needed.

• Since the city took over the business of regulating vans in 1994, most applications to operate private van services have been rejected.

• While the city's 3,669 buses are notoriously unreliable in poor neighborhoods and chalked up 5,609 accidents in 1993 alone, private vans can provide door-to-door service, charge just $1 for most rides, and boast good safety records.

At one time the jitney services were delivering 20,000 passengers a day to various locations. But since the City Council took over, it has rejected all but five van service applications -- allowing only 20 new vehicles to serve a population of seven million.

Observers report that the City Council is simply doing what unions have demanded of it -- denying competition to protect its members.

Vincent Cummings, who founded Brooklyn Van Lines, has obtained legal help from the Institute for Justice -- a law firm which fights for economic liberties for minorities and the poor -- and is suing the city and state of New York -- arguing that anti-jitney laws infringe on the basic right of people to earn an honest living. Oddly enough, traditional civil rights groups have ignored the situation, but New York's Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani says "the city is wrong" and is backing Cummings in his case.

Source: Editorial, "Let the Vans Roll," Wall Street Journal, July 14, 1997.