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June 11, 2007
EMINENT DOMAINIA: The Big Apple Bites
amNY, Cluster of NYC junkyards threatened by redevelopment plans
It REALLY BITES when the city doesn't provide your neighborhood with basic services for decades and then declares it "blighted:"
"After a century of blight and neglect, the future of this area is very bright indeed," Bloomberg said when he released the Willets Point master plan at the nearby Queens Museum of Art.
But shop owners say they don't want to leave. They say that if Willets Point is an eyesore, it's the city's fault.
"They created the blight, now they're going to use it to wipe out all these people," said Michael Rikon, a lawyer who is advising Sambucci and other area business owners.
Reuters, Clinton, Schumer say DOE ignoring power line foes
It SO BITES that our strongest voices in DC make a fuss about property rights in the face of a powerline project, but support using eminent domain for private developers.
Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles Schumer on Friday accused the Department of Energy of turning a deaf ear to critics of a proposed 200-mile stretch of 150-foot-tall electrical towers that would cut through scenic regions of upstate New York.
The two New York Democrats expressed concern over the location of a planned DOE meeting next week for public comment on implications of a new law that allows private property to be taken by federal eminent domain for construction of electrical power lines.
The June 12 meeting will be held in Rochester, an upstate New York city that is about 130 miles from the area of the proposed power line. The line would be erected between Utica and the town of New Windsor in Orange County by a private company called New York Regional Interconnection (NYRI).
NoLandGrab: The upstate property owners want you to know that alternatives to taking their land have never been discussed or studied (link).
American.com, Life After Kelo
It TOTALLY BITES when your state legislature has done nothing to curb eminent domain abuse, two years after the extremely controversial US Supreme Court Kelo decision:
Now for the states that have done nothing or virtually nothing since Kelo. They include several in the Northeast, such as Delaware, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts.
Posted by lumi at June 11, 2007 8:26 AM