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September 18, 2008
Daily News Eminent Domain Smackdown!
NY Daily News Opinion
In today's Daily News, the mixed tag-team of columnist Errol Louis and the Partnership for New York City's Kathryn Wylde (in pro wrestling parlance, they'd be known as "heels") gang up on West Harlem property-owner and Columbia University land grab resistance-fighter Nick Sprayregen (the "face," in wrestling-speak).
We need eminent domain to keep New York City growing, by Kathryn Wylde
Wylde, who gets paid very well to advocate on behalf of New York City's largest corporations (and greatest beneficiaries of property seizures), pens an ode to eminent domain.
Eminent domain has been required for most of our large public projects - from Lincoln Center, Times Square and downtown Brooklyn to affordable housing throughout the five boroughs. Without eminent domain, New York and other older urban centers could not have kept pace with demands for upgraded infrastructure, modern office facilities and increased housing stock.
Unfortunately, eminent domain is under attack. Property rights advocates believe it is unconstitutional to condemn private property for almost any purpose. Anti-development groups claim that it allows big government to collude with rich developers to override the interests of the little guy. Bills have been proposed in the state Legislature and the City Council that would limit the use of eminent domain and slow down economic development in New York at the worst possible point in the economic cycle.
NoLandGrab: We'd like Ms. Wylde to name a "large public project" in downtown Brooklyn. Seems to us they're all private.
And for the record, "the worst possible point in the economic cycle" was when some of the Partnership for NYC's member companies — like Lehman Brothers, AIG, Merrill Lynch and UBS — were making greedy, foolish investments in sub-prime mortgages and risky derivative products. With taxpayers having to bail out some of these bad bets with billions upon billions of dollars, should we also be offering up another form of corporate socialism to other Partnership for NYC members — like Forest City Ratner, Nets Sports & Entertainment, Related Companies and Tishman Speyer?
The eminent domain game is rigged, by Nick Sprayregen
Sadly for all New Yorkers, our state is the most egregious perpetrator of eminent domain abuse in our country. I should know since for the last four years I have battled the state and Columbia University - a private entity - in their threatened use of eminent domain. Columbia wants my land in West Harlem to assist the school in a planned 17-acre expansion in the Manhattanville neighborhood.
The university is in league with the state, and together they are threatening to wield this extraordinary power to take away a business my family has built over decades.
This is dead wrong.
Defenders of the system say eminent domain is necessary to allow for big economic development and housing projects to go forward. They liken today's use of eminent domain to yesterday's use, when property was condemned for the building of roads, fire houses and public libraries. Today, however, what the practice really amounts to is the state playing favorites, choosing one private interest over another - and abusing a government power that should only be wielded in the most limited of circumstances.
The game is rigged, in multiple ways.
NoLandGrab: Sprayregen explains how the deck is stacked mightily against condemnees — "blight" is in the eye of the condemnor, no jury trial, no witnesses allowed, no cross-examination, no discovery, etc., etc.
The right way to fight blight, by Errol Louis
In West Harlem, there are a couple of business owners who don't want to sell their property at any price, which Columbia and ESDC say would cripple the planned project. The most prominent holdout, a man named Nick Sprayregen, is a developer in his own right, with a considerable number of business ventures and commercial properties in Harlem, the Bronx and elsewhere.
Sprayregen has hired civil rights attorney and public advocate candidate Norman Siegel to battle ESDC and Columbia and a series of lawsuits have been launched, along with a frontal attack on New York's eminent domain laws.
Siegel and Sprayregen are perfectly within their rights to try and rewrite the law, and a re-examination of the 40-year-old rules makes sense. New York, unlike most states, gives broad leeway to agencies like ESDC to define when and how eminent domain may be applied, and only a fleeting window of time for property owners to object.
NoLandGrab: Louis fails to deal with the question of why Columbia, a private entity, should be able to develop the land owned by Sprayregen, a private owner. And no one has really offered a good explanation of why Columbia can't work around Sprayregen's property. Why should Nick Sprayregen pay the price for Columbia's failure to plan better?
Posted by eric at September 18, 2008 10:53 AM