Curious as to why you think opposition to a restriction on eminent domain (prop 11) is a conservative position. Narrowing the definition of “public use” to actually mean “public use” rather than allowing any confiscation of private property - even for the purpose of simply transferring it to another more “favored” private property owner - is consistent with constitutional restraint of government power. Under the current legal environment, I saw homeowners in Hurst Texas robbed of their homes under eminent domain condemnations of their property so that the city of Hurst could then hand their homes over to Simon DeBartolo (of the San Francisco 69ers DeBartolo family) so he could expand Northeast Mall. These families were “compensated” for the taking of their property in the neighborhood of 50 cents on the dollar or less. Proposition 11 would prohibit this sort of confiscation for the purpose of transferring private property from on private party to another.
From the link:
This is an effort to provide further protections from the abuses of eminent domain that can arise thanks to the Supreme Court decision Kelo v. City of New London (2005).
Unfortunately, the wording in the statute authorizing this Amendment is very deceptive. It was changed numerous times during the legislative session and the final version was amended to include the authorization for Amendment #4, the University funding Amendment. Needless to say that’s very shaky ground to begin with, especially when the original wording was much stronger before all the adjustments occurred.
Secondly, this authorizes the legislature to grant eminent domain authority to any undefined “entity” it wishes with a simple 2/3rds vote and we don’t believe that that’s a high enough hurdle! They’ve already granted eminent domain authority to some utilities and hospitals, do we really want that to continue with just a simple 2/3rds vote? I’d rather this one go back to the drawing board and be written up with some real teeth to it and if that’s too difficult, too bad.
Finally, the appearance of this bill is as though the legislature simply wanted to pass some kind of eminent domain restrictions and if we the people vote it down, they can say it’s our fault. Well, we’ve had enough of legislatures not doing the job that we the people sent them to do and then expecting us to live with the results. This should not only be voted down, but those legislators who openly and actively supported it should have to account for why the bill was weakened repeatedly throughout the session and why they haven’t enacted tougher restrictions already. It’s only our fault that they don’t do their jobs, if we don’t vote them out when we have the opportunity.
(I may vote yes on this. I think more restrictions on eminent domain are good, but I see the author’s point.)