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Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that your rights under the federal constitution are not violated if the local government decides to take your property and sell it to someone who will pay more taxes.
The case arose in depressed New London, Conn., where pharmaceutical giant Pfizer in 1998 agreed to build a $270 million global research facility. It was near a neighborhood called Fort Trumball, and to make Pfizer happier, the New London City Council launched a redevelopment plan for 90 acres of Fort Trumball: conference center, hotels, offices, condos, etc.
The private non-profit New London Development Corp. would handle this. The city gave it the power of eminent domain, so that it could condemn property if the owners weren't willing to sell.
Among those unwilling to sell was Susette Kelo, who was
joined by six other Fort Trumball homeowners. They argued
in state court that taking property from one private owner
to transfer it to another was not a public use.
The
Connecticut Supreme Court found in favor of the city, and
last week the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that this did
not violate the Fifth Amendment of the federal constitution
which states that nor shall private property be taken
for public use, without just compensation.
As Justice Sandra Day O'Connor pointed out in her
dissent, this just enhances the power of the wealthy, and
it's not as though they're an oppressed group in this
country. The beneficiaries are likely to be those
citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the
political process, including large corporations and
development firms. . . . The government now has license to
transfer property from those with fewer resources to those
with more.
In a separate dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas observed
that, These losses will fall disproportionately on poor
communities . . . the least politically powerful.
In a typical scenario, a corporation persuades a city government to go along with its scheme. For instance, Wal-Mart tried to get Arvada to condemn a lake so it could be filled in for a parking lot -- something our state Supreme Court forbade, on a procedural issue concerning blight.
In another example, a baseball team wanted a new stadium and it persuaded the city government to condemn the land. And not just stadium land, but a few blocks next to it that would increase in value as a result of stadium construction. After that, the team owners sold out for a handsome profit on account of the fine new stadium -- one of those owners, a Texan named G.W. Bush, thereby parlayed a $600,000 investment into a $15 million profit and a political career.
But in the New London case, the U.S. Supreme Court
didn't really have much choice, unless it wanted to
federalize every eminent-domain case in the country.
Traditionally the federal courts have left it to the states
to define private property
and to elected bodies,
like legislatures and city councils, to define public
use.
And that's basically what the court did this time -- if
the New London City Council defined condemning private
homes so the property can be sold to a hotel developer so
that Pfizer has a spiffy place to put up visiting
executives
as a public use,
and the Connecticut
courts agreed, then the federal Supreme Court wasn't going
to step into that.
So how to prevent the rich from using government to take anything they want? Our legislature has put some limitations on their condemnation powers in recent years, and that's a good step.
But it's best if local governments don't even try to
condemn land for the benefit of some multinational -- and
that means we should watch them closely, vote carefully in
local elections, and recall them quickly whenever they
confuse public use,
like a school or road or park,
with public benefit,
like increased sales-tax
revenue because a big box will generate more money than a
ma-and-pa hardware store.
Or, as the saying goes, eternal vigilance is the
price of liberty.
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