« City Won’t “Blight” Diverse Southeast Seattle Neighborhood | Main | Seeing beyond Moses »
February 5, 2007
EMINENT DOMAINIA
The Progress Report, How to Eliminate Eminent Domain
The argument for eminent domain is that when the government builds something long and skinny, such as a road, those who refuse to sell their land make it impossible or very costly to place the road elsewhere or go around the holdout. But eminent domain has also been used to redevelop a neighborhood to build shopping centers and better dwellings that pay a higher property tax. Laws that empower governments to declare that an area has “blight” are abused under the concept “blight makes right,” to allow government to declare any location to have “blight,” even places that are undeveloped.
MidHudsonNews.com, NYRI sues state over eminent domain law
New York Regional Interconnect Inc. Thursday filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Albany that seeks to toss out a recently passed state law that attempts to revoke eminent domain authority under New York's Transportation Corporations Law. NYRI wants to build a power line from Oneida County to Orange County and run it through part of the Upper Delaware River corridor.
NYRI's lawsuit claims that the law attempts to discriminate against it, and therefore violates its rights under the U.S. Constitution.
HighCountyNews.org, Condemned
Two retired engineers are fighting to keep their ranch.
Idaho-based J.R. Simplot Co. plans to expand its phosphate mine on nearby national forest land, and wants to build a road across the ranch. The company offered to buy the Riedes’ land for $2.1 million. The proposed road would permanently scar the hillside and generate heavy truck traffic near the site of their future home.
The Riedes do not want to sell, and plan to fight the mine expansion because they fear the mining upstream could pollute the water on their ranch. They purchased their land for around $645,000 in 1997, but say that replacing it with a comparable parcel today — 467 acres with amenities such as private trout-fishing streams — would cost closer to $6 million, triple Simplot’s offer.
But they might have no choice. Idaho is one of five Western states — including Washington, Wyoming, Colorado and Oregon — whose constitutions extend powers of eminent domain to private entities, such as railroads, mining companies, and oil and gas drillers.
...
But in Idaho and Wyoming, private entities don’t even need the government as a go-between.
The Virginian Pilot, Property rights don’t halt wrongs
While it’s true that Virginia law expressly bans government confiscations for economic development, that hasn’t stopped such things from occurring under other names and pretexts.
The article lists some examples of creative work-arounds in the State of Virginia. Here's a double whammy:
The Supreme Court of Virginia in 2003 allowed Hampton to take far more land than was needed for a new road, then lease the rest to the developer of the Power Plant project. The government used 20 percent of the property owned by Frank and Dora Ottofaro for a road, then leased the other 80 percent to the developer. Such a case opens the door for local governments to condemn land as a pretext for benefiting developers. To add insult, the city bulldozed a house on the property before the case was settled.
Posted by lumi at February 5, 2007 7:36 AM