Lawmakers Seek to Foil Property Seizures

Lawmakers Seek to Foil Property Seizures

By LIBBY QUAID
The Associated Press
Tuesday, September 6, 2005; 8:52 PM

WASHINGTON -- Lawmakers have a message for any local officials who think farmland on the edge of town might make a nice shopping mall: Seize the property and you'll lose federal funding for your community.

Republicans and Democrats alike want to negate a recent Supreme Court ruling that gave cities broad power to take private properties for use as shopping malls or other development.

"This potentially could allow a city to go out and confiscate a sugar beet field and turn it into a shopping mall," said Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson, the senior House Agriculture Committee Democrat.

The committee is holding a hearing Wednesday on the most far-reaching of several bills to thwart the high court's ruling. The measure would yank all federal economic development funds from any state, city or town that seizes private property in the name of economic development.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/06/AR2005090601436.html
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it would make more sense for a city to confiscate a shopping mall and turn it into a sugar beet field.

nt

Maybe it can in some way help the people of New Orleans.

Im the paranoid type, and it seems to me a law that takes away ALL federal funding for a community to punish the government and corporations that misuse eminent domain may be somehow open to abuse.

For example, an outgoing Repub mayor could REALLY fuck up a Dem mayor's administration by seizing some land somewhere. And who, in the end, would REALLY suffer? The people who actually NEED federal funding - the poor etc.

I really don't know...

Wouldnt it be better to focus the punishment on the corporations themselves? Like maybe a penalty tax of 80% for income derived from seized property? That would stop this sort of shit in its tracks.

I was rather laconic in my post. I don't want the punishment to be in the form of withholding federal funding to the community. I agree with you that an outgoing Republican could do such a thing deliberately to impoverish an incoming Democratic adminstration.

The corporation should not be allowed to benefit from eminent domain. Eminent domain because a railroad has to go from coast to coast is one thing. Eminent domain so that corporations can take personal real estate is quite another. Since the stated intended purpose is to economically benefit the community, your idea to make the corporation pay 80% of income is perfect. That would truly benefit the community, and it would likely discourage the greedy corporations since they would not gain through theft.

They always talk the talk but almost never walk the walk...

Unfortunately, the federal government can't stop the abuses (now that the Supreme Court has punted its responsibility to uphold the Constitution), but they can throw in this monkey wrench to curtail them.

As much as one might like to believe them, this is all theater.

In Texas we had this an effort and the R's passed a "tough" law. Of course, the new stadium in Arlington for the Cowboys and Fort Worth's half-a-billion pork project, Trinity Uptown, are exempted. Small business and homeowners are forced out. Guess 'tough' isn't what 'tough' used to be.

Expect the same of R's in Washington.