Caring About Kelo
By Dimitri Vassilaros
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Monday, September 10, 2007
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/columnists/vassilaros/s_526523.htmlÂ
Think of this as a string tied around your finger. A yellow Post-it note. E-mail with a red flag. A message to yourself from your BlackBerry. Anything to help you remember the Private Property Rights Protection Act of 2007 that stops taxpayer funding of eminent domain abuse. And while you’re challenging the hippocampus part of your brain to enhance your memory, don’t forget the blind outrage you might have had when the U.S. Supreme Court — in Kelo v. City of New London, Connecticut – ruled in 2005 that the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment did not mean what it means.
The Bill of Rights prohibits the government from taking private property for public use without just compensation. If the government wants the land to build, say, a highway that could be used by the public, it would have to pay the owner the fair-market value of the land.
However, New London officials used the power of eminent domain to grab the homes of Susette Kelo and her neighbors and then handed over the property to another private owner who wanted to develop it.
In one of the court’s most inane decisions, five of the nine justices held that the governmental taking of private property to give to another promising economic development constitutes a permissible “public use.”
Now, government can take virtually any property and transfer title to another private owner — probably with good political connections and very deep pockets — who plans to make the property more valuable and therefore likely to generate more tax dollars for the government entity.
Homeowners of modest means would be the most tempting to target. Almost any development could generate more property taxes than the current use, and the homeowners would be the least able to afford fighting city hall.
Many states were rightly stunned by the court’s incomprehensible justification that effectively ended private property rights and the ramifications of the ruling. Some passed legislation that essentially said the Takings Clause remains in effect in the respective states.
Two representatives in Congress who typically are at opposite ends of the political universe joined forces to further undermine Kelo.
Reps. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., and F. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., introduced their Private Property Rights Protection Act of 2007 in July. For two fiscal years, the act would deny economic development funds to state and local governments that use eminent domain for private development.
Well, it’s a start, but hardly a slam dunk.
You see, the House overwhelmingly passed House Resolution 4128, the Private Property Rights Protection Act of 2005, by a vote of 376 to 38, according to the Institute for Justice, a libertarian law firm in Arlington, Va.
That bill also had broad bipartisan support. And yet, the bill languished in the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee before it died, the institute said.
Today’s high-profile issues such as the mess in Iraq, stopping illegal immigration and the presidential campaigns can be very distracting, making Kelo an afterthought.
This column called the House Judiciary Committee and the offices of Waters and Sensenbrenner on Thursday to ask when the bill will come up for a vote. None replied by deadline.
How many other Americans will care enough to call?