Eminent Domain Round Up
Lobbygow on the OwnerSHIFT Society:
Make way for the OwnerSHIFT Society™, a kleptocrat’s paradise, where local municipalities and well connected developers are eager to help homeowners and small business entrepreneurs achieve that special warm glow that accompanies sacrificing your hard-won dreams for the greater good – developer’s fees and sales tax revenues!
Sadly, this cronyist utopia is threatened by an upcoming SCOTUS case, Kelo vs. New London. Apparently some selfish, petty homeowners with quaint notions of “property rights” and neighborhood integrity are questioning the Old Boy Network’s god-given right to do whatever they damned well please.
He also links to No Land Grab, which notes that a number of cities and municipalities are filing briefs in Kelo v. New London to defend the practice of abusing eminent domain to take from one private party to give to another.
Also, reader John emails this article about Eminent Domain in California. When city planners attack:
Sacramento officials want property owners of rundown buildings, struggling businesses or empty lots along portions of K Street to create thriving shops there – or else.
In a proposal to be presented to the City Council today, property owners in the 700 and 800 blocks of K Street would have 90 days to come up with viable redevelopment plans. If they don’t, city officials will begin negotiating to buy the property, and as a last resort take the sites through eminent domain, said Wendy Saunders, the city’s director of economic development.
“We haven’t tried anything like this before,” Saunders said. “We’d like people who own the properties who would like to be developers to be given the first shot.”
Nice of them to give owners the option of developing or else. However, taking the land to give to other developers fails the public use test.
January 26th, 2005 at 12:03 pm
Looks like Sacramento benchmarked Knoxville’s policy toward the Market Square owners as an example of “compassionate” property seizure. Fortunately, most of the MS property owners developed said plans and arguably benefitted from city investment.
I was involved in the effort to block the “Master Developer” concept for Market Square. The solution wasn’t ideologically pure, but it was better than the usual smash and grab.
What really gets my blood boiling is the whole idea of designating an entire area or neighborhood “blighted.” It’s not as if they don’t have zoning laws and building codes to enforce keeping individually owned buildings up to a standard. If the property is truly decrepit, then they can condemn it.
Designating “blight” is just an excuse for railroading homeowners and business owners that the powers that be feel are unlikely to have the resources or nerve to fight back.
Fortunately, many of these would-be victims are packing fully loaded chutzpah, and they don’t plan to fire a warning shot. If there is sufficient nerve and organization among the affected parties, the resources will follow. Eminent domain is about as popular as government funded crack distribution.