Posted on 04/22/2003 12:00:39 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
If you believe your home is your castle or that the government can only take it for public use, you should be warned otherwise, says a public-interest law firm that documented thousands of cases nationwide where governments have abused eminent domain.
The report, titled "Public Power, Private Gain," is the first of its kind nationwide to document how often government confiscates private property and hands it over to private developers, says the Institute For Justice, a libertarian-oriented firm based in Washington, D.C.
"This report is a wake-up call to all citizens," says Dana Berliner, a senior attorney at the institute and author of the report. "Your property can be taken away by the unholy alliance of government and business interests. It is happening all over the country, and it can happen to you."
In the report, Berliner discusses more than 10,000 cases where homes, businesses, churches and private land were seized or threatened with seizure over the past five years – not to be used for public use, but instead for private for-profit development.
The concept of eminent domain is defined as the right of government to take private property for public use "by virtue of the superior dominion of the sovereign power over all lands within its jurisdiction," according to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary. The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits the federal government from taking private property for public use without "just compensation" to the owner.
Among the examples cited by the report include the condemnation of a family's home so that the manager of a planned golf course could live in it; the eviction of four elderly siblings from their home of six decades for a private industrial park; and the removal of a woman in her 80s from her home of 55 years, allegedly to expand a sewer plant but in actuality to give her home to an automobile dealership.
The report said that since 1998 there have been 10,282-plus filed or threatened condemnations for private parties with reports of actual or threatened condemnation for private parties coming from 41 states.
John Kramer, vice president for communications, said the institute would release its findings to the public today at the National Press Club in Washington.
Besides the federal Constitution, the firm says every state's constitution also imposes similar eminent domain restrictions on government.
"In America, private property can only be taken for a public use, not for a private use," the institute said, in a statement.
But, as the report denotes, "state and local governments believe they can condemn anything for any purpose, no matter how blatantly private," the statement continued.
States with the worst record of private-use condemnations, the firm said, are California, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan and Ohio. Runners-up include Pennsylvania, Florida and New Jersey.
Cities with the worst record are Detroit, Riviera Beach, Fla., San Jose, Calif., and Philadelphia.
"From a legal standpoint," the institute said, the worst states in which to live for property owners seeking to avoid condemnation are New York, Missouri and Kansas.
But the institute's report also contained some good news for property owners: "The best states [to avoid condemnation of property] are Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, South Dakota and Wyoming, none of which had any reported eminent domain for private use."
In its February 2003 issue, Reason Magazine published a story chronicling eminent domain abuses. It said some property owners are getting legal satisfaction, but that those cases could be the exception.
"Despite recent victories, the courts are unlikely to be much help in reining in abuses of eminent domain," the magazine reported. "In fact, many of the recent victories against eminent-domain abuse have resulted from nonjudicial remedies."
Not everyone agrees eminent domain is being abused.
"The fact is that in the average community in the typical state, the system is working well," claims the American Planning Association, a nonprofit public interest and research organization, Reason magazine reported. "Property-rights advocates are waging a guerrilla war of sound bites, misleading 'spin doctoring' and power politics which characterizes government at every level as evil empires of bad intent."
Critics argue that sometimes eminent domain is needed so local governments and private real estate partners can move quickly on development projects.
"Eminent domain is critical for local redevelopment efforts," says John Bowers, executive director of the Arizona Association for Economic Development. "Without it, it would be virtually impossible for a city to assemble a multi-parcel piece of property for redevelopment."
In August, the Phoenix-based Goldwater Institute addressed eminent-domain abuse in Arizona.
"Despite strong protections for private property in the Arizona Constitution, municipalities increasingly have been taking private property from landowners for use by other private citizens and by corporations," the institute said, in a statement. "These abuses of eminent-domain power have been enabled in recent years by the 1997 redevelopment statute."
Berliner says the most common excuse for abusing eminent domain is for governments and developers to cite "community" betterment, a concept he says doesn't exist.
"Communities have no rights (to execute private-use condemnation) – not under natural law, not under common law and not under the Constitution," he says, even if most local people favor a particular development project. "It was to prevent just such abuses, the tyranny of majority over minority, that the Founders wrote our Constitution."
Court: County can make landowners sell property for economic growth
04/19/2003 - The Associated PressKansas counties may force private landowners to sell property to be used for industrial and economic development projects, the state Supreme Court ruled Friday. The decision was the first by the court on whether counties may exercise the power of eminent domain -- often used when land is needed for roads or utility lines -- to acquire land specifically for economic development.
In its unanimous ruling, the court said such forced sales to counties are legal under the 1974 "home rule" statute, which lets counties govern their affairs without needing to have every power listed in state law.
Friday's decision arose from a case in Shawnee County, where the county commission passed a resolution last year to acquire 400 acres south of Topeka for an industrial park. Target Corp. plans to build a distribution center on part of the site.
Nine of the affected property owners sold their land, but Robert Tolbert and his company, General Building Contractors LLC, refused to sell seven acres they owned.
A judge affirmed the county's right to take Tolbert's land by eminent domain, for which Tolbert and the company received $329,000. Tolbert's appeal resulted in Friday's Supreme Court ruling on counties' authority to take land for economic development purposes.
"Counties have and may exercise the power of eminent domain to acquire property for industrial or economic development purposes," retired Justice Edward Larson wrote for the court.
The Supreme Court also clarified that the proper procedure calls for a county commission to pass and publish a resolution stating its intent to take a property by eminent domain.
Here in Stockton, California, the city acquired a city block to build "The Gateway to the City" project. This block was located at the major offramp to the downtown area on the Cross Town Freeway and was on a major route from the Stockton Airport into town. The argument was that Stockton needed a more impressive entry to the city that reflected our mutli-ethnic background. It would, in the words of one of our local re-development types, "be a source of pride and a showcase for our city."
Displaced through the city's power of Eminent Domain were several low-income residential hotels (eyesores but providing affordable housing for people who could not otherwise be housed), several small businesses including a grocery, a bar, a liquor store, and one of the finest Mexican Restaurants in the city... well established and popular... that had been operated for years by a Immigrant Mexican family (legal immigrants, 2nd generation).
After forcing the owners to shut down and sell, razing the buildings and turning the block into an empty lot, the city sold the land to a developer for development of the Gateway Project that would be the welcoming sight to visitors to Stockton.
What was built on the site? A MacDonalds and a Gulf Service Station mini-mart! Both facades have a California Mission appearance... but where is the "source of pride?" And does Stockton REALLY want to showcase our city as being a place that is so generic as to consider a MacDonalds and a Gulf Service Station Mini-mart a showcase to impress tourists and visitors?
If the "Gateway Project" was to feature commercial establishments, what better business could have been chosen but the already established Mexican Restaurant? It could have been upgraded, beautified and made the centerpiece of a truly impressive block of shops of all the ethnicities that Stockton is home to... instead we got a gas station and a fast-food emporium... so generic that it says nothing. Eminent Domain... bah.
Here in New York, a lot of condemnations are rationalized by "open space" and similar conservationist / environmentalist pleadings. A private organization, the Nature Conservancy, has been involved in a growing fraction of these, possibly the majority. The Nature Conservancy receives state funds for the maintenance of a number of properties condemned under environmental initiatives.
Watch for ever newer and more ingenious redefinitions of "public use." This is the country, after all, that claimed that to grow corn on one's own land and feed it to one's own hogs constitutes "interstate commerce."
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason:
http://palaceofreason.com
Try a google search for "Eminent Domain"
JH2, These "public private partnerships" are a crime against humanity, and should be prosecuted under RICO. The ORGANIZED crime unit. Peace and love, George.
Not that the citizens needn't have every right delineated but that the counties needn't have every power listed. Cripes.
From The Sun-Times:
Mayor Daley took potshots at Chicago's oldest and largest homeless shelter Wednesday for standing in the way of a long-stalled expansion at Jones College Prep High School.
Daley said the city has made a generous offer to relocate the 126-year-old Pacific Garden Mission, 646 S. State, and it ought to be accepted.
The mission has agreed to make the move from the fast-growing South Loop neighborhood, where the mayor lives, to a 205,000 square foot warehouse at 1001 S. Clinton that has no residential neighbors. But officials are holding out for more money.
"Six million dollars is a lot of money. Give me a break . . . This is taxpayers' money. I could give 'em $100 million, but I'm sorry," the mayor said.
"We're gonna relocate them . . . We've had a number of locations for them. We have been working with them for many years. But they're very successful. They have a huge trust account. Find out how much they have in their trust account."
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As for the city's relocation offer, McCarrell seems resigned to let the courts decide. Last month, the Chicago Board of Education filed a lawsuit against the mission to try to break a stalemate that has prevented Jones College Prep from building a $15.5 million gym and library on the mission site.
McCarrell argued that the city's offer "doesn't begin to pay anywhere near what it would cost to move this ministry to another location without hindering what we do and the outreach we have. The owner is asking over three times that amount just for the building."
C'mon now, Huey Long set the precedent for that long ago.
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