Posted on 09/15/2006 5:25:39 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
The Killeen-based company that promised to protect landowners – for a fee – from potential eminent domain proceedings in connection with the proposed Trans-Texas Corridor project agreed to the terms set in a temporary injunction Thursday during a hearing before the 345th District Court in Austin.
Attorney General Greg Abbott sought the temporary injunction to stop the business "You Can't Take It" from continuing
activity on grounds that the defendants may have violated parts of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices-Consumer Protection Act.
By agreeing to the entry of the temporary injunction, the defendants agreed to cease all business activity, including advertising. The court also ordered the defendants to advise any financial or brokerage institution controlling any of its assets.
The company suspended its operations on Wednesday after the Texas Attorney General's Office notified it of the court hearing Tuesday evening.
"They agreed to everything we put in the temporary injunction, which will bind them over until trial," Tom Kelley, spokesman for the Texas attorney general, said Thursday afternoon.
Hale Stewart, a Houston attorney representing the company, said his clients have shut the company down and "are moving to the immediate settlement with the Texas attorney general."
"Basically, my clients' company doesn't have the money to fight this," he said.
The company claimed to have found a loophole in eminent domain procedures using the legal precedent established through the 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Kelo vs. city of New London, to justify its business plan.
The company and Killeen residents Douglas Lee Thayer, Lou Ann Reed and her daughter Nykee Jolene Murray of Austin are defendants in the lawsuit.
"I'm not exactly to thrilled with all of the statements that have been made and everything that has been put out," Thayer said. "Everything they said is mistaken."
Stewart said the company has only been in business for a month and hasn't purchased any properties or done any other business.
"I frankly think it's a smear campaign from Abbott," he said. "I think Greg Abbott is playing dirty."
Based on the number of companies that open every day in Texas, he said he did not understand why his clients' company was singled out.
"Why is it that this one company that hasn't done any business," he said. "The Texas attorney general has shown a remarkably strong interest in this company. I find that really fascinating."
Based on the Kelo decision, Thayer claimed a company could block the state from taking any land through eminent domain.
The decision says that if an economic development project would provide an economic benefit in the form of higher tax revenues to a city, then that eminent domain could not override that project, Stewart said.
The Trans-Texas Corridor is intended to relieve congestion on Interstate 35. It will parallel I-35 and extend from Oklahoma to Mexico, with possible connections to the Gulf Coast. It would not only separate car and truck lanes, but it would also include railroads and underground utilities, such as telephone, water and gas pipelines.
"I don't think it is appropriate that the attorney general's office is used to protect the Trans-Texas Corridor," Thayer said on Thursday.
Trans-Texas Corridor PING!
BTTT
bump.
Well, given that this is a remarkably wrong reading of Kilo, it's not surprising.
It seems this company was trying to get people to sell THEM their houses and land, with the promise I guess of letting them keep their houses, in order to "protect" them from having their houses taken by the state.
Problem being, the state has the constitutional right to take their property in order to build a road, regardless of the fact that the property pays more in taxes than a road would.
Kilo said that increasing economic benefit to the city was a valid public purpose for "taking". It said nothing about it being an OVERRIDING public purpose.
Note how flawed the argument was -- there is almost no case where a road has a higher tax benefit to government than privately-owned property which actually pays taxes.
Government builds roads because of the non-economic benefits to its people in the form of being able to get where they want to go in a reasonable period of time.
The state had to stop this company before they convinced anybody to sell them their land under this fraudulent scheme.
The true result would have been people would have still lost their land, but this new company would have earned a lot of money, and it probably would have cost the state a lot more to purchase the land, costing taxpayers more.
When has government EVER had a problem taking private property to build roads? That's been an acceptable practice for as long as roads have been built, and has nothing to do with Kilo.
Roads are built for public benefit, the public can use the roads.
Kilo was about private land being taken and given to other private owners, who would build private services and facilities rather than a public service or facility.
If Kilo involved building a park, there wouldn't have been an issue to resolve -- government has the right to take your land to make a public park.
Kilo was unique in that it allowed government to force you to sell to another private developer, just because that developer would build something that brought more taxes to the government.
Thanks for the ping!
You're welcome. :-)
We have a toll road in Virginia, and the state does help with purchasing land through emminent domain as they expand the road. Now they are trying to do a private railroad as mass transit -- that seems a bit overboard for my tastes.
I'm not a fan of the toll road concept in Texas, but since I live in Virginia I don't really know what is happening. I just considered that a separate issue from whether the road could be built by eminent domain.
Having thought about it some more, I can see where you could draw some comparison between aquiring land and giving it away, and acquiring a road and giving the toll collection to a private company.
I think one difference would be that, while the tolls are collected privately, the road will be open to the public. If the company could shut the road and sell access to it's own clients, that would be wrong.
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