EDITORIAL: Eminent Domain Reform is Overdue
By The Stamford Advocate, Conn.
Feb. 5–It’s human nature to play for time when big issues need to be resolved. But big issues — like eminent domain reform — are what state lawmakers were elected to confront. Putting that subject on the back burner of still another legislative session would represent a failure in that responsibility.
It’s not as though the state Legislature is unfamiliar with how eminent domain powers have become an affront to private property rights. The issue has been around in Connecticut for more than four years. The notorious New London property condemnation case that wended its way through the legal system to an unfortunate decision by the U.S. Supreme Court goes back at least that far.
In a nutshell, the courts upheld the notion that governments can take property from one private owner and give it over to another for development that would increase the tax base or provide jobs. It was an interpretation of “public uses” that went far beyond the widely accepted view that such condemnation should only be done when government needs to build a road, or school, or other public project.
After the 2005 high court ruling upholding such seizures, concern was such in Connecticut that state legislative leaders asked municipalities to put a moratorium on them until lawmakers could act. But not only did legislation die last year. It isn’t even on the Democratic House majority’s high-priority list for the current session, according to a report from Staff Writer Brian Lockhart. And the House speaker says no one need bother about the moratorium request, either.
Oh, the issue has not been forgotten, said the speaker, James Amann of Milford. It’s just a “tier- two” priority.
Sounds like “forgotten” to us, as far as the speaker is concerned.
“We have so many challenges,” Mr. Amann said of the lawmakers’ priorities. Indeed, they do. Some of those challenges, like energy costs and education funding, are now critical in part because they have languished during years past — as eminent domain is doing.
To be sure, there are some lawmakers who maintain that eminent domain could be addressed in the current session. Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s announcement she intends to pursue reforms may help make that come to pass.
On the Senate side, for example, Judiciary Co-Chairman Andrew McDonald, D-Stamford, said he plans to “take another run” at passing a compromise reform bill. Then he added: “But there are other issues that have more immediate impact on the entire population of the state, such as energy, the education-cost-sharing formula and universal health care. You’ve got to remember, (the New London case) gained a lot of notoriety, but involved seven or eight plaintiffs.”
We hope that Mr. McDonald was not suggesting that an attack on bedrock rights is a matter less pressing because relatively few people have been affected by it thus far.
Further, it’s doubtful that the situation would be viewed in that way by some other property owners, such as Nancy Esposito. Her Norwalk business, Casey’s Sheet Metal Service, operates in an area targeted for redevelopment.
“I’m in the midst of this whole issue in a big way,” she said. “I have a lot of contact with the public, and hear from people time and time again (who are) totally outraged.”
According to the libertarian-orient-ed Heartland Institute, 18 states enacted laws restricting eminent domain in the year following the high court’s New London ruling. News reports also said ballot measures favoring restrictions passed in at least eight others last November. And it is likely some states already had protections in place that made new laws unnecessary.
People in other states understood there was a big issue that had to be confronted. Connecticut needs to do the same.
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Copyright (c) 2007, The Stamford Advocate, Conn.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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