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22 Bills Filed to Challenge Right to Take Private Land

Posted on: Wednesday, 22 March 2006, 03:03 CST

By MARK BALLARD

22 bills filed to challenge right to take private land

Louisiana lawmakers have filed at least 22 bills - more than on any other issue - seeking to forbid government agencies from taking private property to further economic development.

The legislation, prompted by a U.S. Supreme Court decision, would reverse a recent trend toward giving public-private partnerships the power to take a person's home or property, then turn it over to a business that promises to increase tax revenues or create jobs.

It's called expropriation or eminent domain. The Legislature has specifically granted that power to 39 agencies since 2000.

"Maybe we did go overboard and grant too many expropriations," said Rep. Peppi Bruneau, R-New Orleans, who sponsored one of the measures to limit taking property.

"The right to private property is a basic. It should only be tampered with under the most extreme circumstances," he said.

So many bills have been filed and so much controversy is expected that the House Civil Law committee plans a hearing today to preview the issue before the Legislature convenes Monday to officially debate the bills.

A number of the bills would amend the state constitution to ensure that governments can't take land for economic development purposes.

Louisiana joins 41 other state legislatures in discussing the issue.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco's chief recruiter of new business to the state, the state Department of Economic Development, is not taking a position on the legislation, said Richard House, the department's general counsel.

The state government has not taken private property for economic development purposes, "and it's not contemplated in the future," he said.

But it's an authority state legislators have given local agencies, amid some controversy.

Water reservoir districts, for instance, have been criticized for grabbing generations-old family farms and turning them into upscale lakeside residential and resort communities.

Government long had the authority to force a person to sell his private property for "public purposes" such as roads, schools and drainage.

Recently, local governments began expanding the "public purposes" definition to help developers by taking property for projects that would create new jobs and revive blighted urban areas.

For instance, eminent domain was used to transform Times Square in New York City, once a hooker hangout featuring pornographic movie houses, into a family-friendly area featuring Disney movies.

Closer to home, "The riverfront redevelopment in Shreveport could never have been accomplished without expropriation," said Dan Garrett, general counsel for the Police Jury Association of Louisiana.

The bills would strip an essential tool local government uses to improve living conditions, he said.

Local governments, whose officials live in the community and answer directly to voters, are the best arbiters for weighing the public's needs over an individual's rights, Garrett said.

"If a police jury in this state ever did anything that was heinous in expropriation, they probably would be recalled before the lawsuit made it through the courts," Garrett said.

"Economic development is not proper use for eminent domain," countered Sen. Joe McPherson, D-Woodworth, who sponsored Senate Bill 1, one of the 18 measures seeking to include the ban in Louisiana's constitution.

The issue makes allies of McPherson and Bruneau, who come from opposite ends of the political spectrum. For years, both had pushed unsuccessfully to narrow government's ability to take property.

But it took a U.S. Supreme Court decision to crystallize their fears about public-private partnerships, both said.

On June 23, 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 to approve a New London, Conn., economic development agency taking the homes of Susette Kelo and 14 others to build a private hotel resort that would create about 1,000 jobs.

The majority of the justices relied on a half century of court rulings in determining that government can include economic development with roads and schools as a reason to take someone's personal property.

The decision "flew in the face of what people thought they understood about their property rights," said Jenifer Zeigler, a legislative affairs attorney with the Institute for Justice, the Arlington, Va., group that represented Kelo and her neighbors.

McPherson said the institute helped draft his legislation, which is worded similarly to most of 18 bills seeking to ban expropriation for economic development in the state constitution.

The group recommends passing constitutional amendments rather than pushing bills that tinker with state laws, Zeigler said. Fixing the definition of "public purpose" in a state's constitution trumps any later efforts to add what Zeigler called "whacky definitions" that would expand expropriation power.

Rep. Glenn Ansardi, whose House Civil Law committee is to hear all the bills, scheduled an informational hearing for today to which he has invited the authors of the bills to hear presentations by LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center Chancellor John J. Costonis and Brian Blaesser, a Boston lawyer helping state Realtor associations prepare eminent domain legislation.

"It's a hot button issue this year," Ansardi said.

Source: Advocate; Baton Rouge, La.

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