Big landowners exploit eminent domain controversy

The "regulation for thee, but not for me" dominionists (the types who are always posting negative comments here) must be torn over having to risk one of their dogmas in order to shove another dogma down everyone else's throat.

Today's conservatives (unlike the conservatives of 30 years ago) usually support eminent domain abuse. America is dotted with towns run by right-wing officials who misuse eminent domain to condemn working-class residents' homes, pay them less than what it's worth, and turn the property over (also at a deflated price) to rich, right-wing developers who construct large businesses or new homes for the wealthy. Another example is our entry about how the Republican Congress allowed a private utility company to snatch land for power lines in an environmentally sensitive area.

Eminent domain abuse is fundamentally flawed as it is a reverse Robin Hood - but the Supreme Court ruled it legal in 2005. They didn't say it wasn't stupid. They only said it was legal - until a law specifically prohibits it. Their apparent belief was that while the Constitution requires just compensation for taking land for public use, it doesn't say anything about taking it for private use - because who the hell ever thought the government would try to take land for private use?

One of few good things about this ruling is that it spurred states to pass laws to crack down on these quirky land grabs. (Not like local governments pay any heed to these laws. My city has already flouted Kentucky's law by forcing an elderly woman out of her house to build a ritzy condo.) By the same token, however, this situation is also used as a Fisher-Price Step Stool by today's conservatives to promote efforts to block environmental regulations and tenant protections.

To them, a land grab doesn't mean the actual loss of land. It means stopping them from using their land (much of which they probably got from a town abusing eminent domain) for an unreasonable purpose. They expect to be compensated if a law that's existed for decades prevents them from using their land for something that harms public safety or pollutes the water. That's exactly like if a person who owns a baseball bat expects to be compensated because the law won't let them go out and bludgeon people with it.

Big conservative landowners like getting cheap land taken from old neighborhoods. But what they really want is unfettered use of the land they have. To paraphrase greedy hotelier Leona Helmsley, they think regulations are only for the little people. Society's needs are considered a barrier to profits. Last year, the landowning class got Proposition 90 on the ballot in California. Though this referendum would have prohibited eminent domain abuse, the main feature of Proposition 90 was restricting government's power to enact consumer, workplace, or environmental rules to protect the public's safety. People thought the measure was just about eminent domain, so it almost passed!

Now California voters may face a similar referendum next June if big landowners collect enough signatures. This one may be worse: Although it would bar eminent domain abuse, it would also prohibit cities from regulating land use or even having rent control laws - which is the main goal of this measure. Democratic Assemblyman Mark Leno says the referendumb "has a hidden agenda" with little to do with eminent domain.

If you lived in Massachusetts in 1994, your blood is boiling now. That year, the Bay State faced a referendum backed by the real estate industry to ban cities from having rent control. Backers of the initiative engaged in lies and bullying tactics, such as disrupting graduation ceremonies, and the media was full-bore for abolishing rent control. Did the referendum pass? It was the Year of the Newtzi, so take a guess. What's most stinging is that the referendum passed statewide even though it lost in the cities that had rent control. Once again, the cities were held hostage by the suburbs voting in an election they had no stake in.

With the election rigged (a poll just before the election showed the referendum losing), cities with rent control should have ignored the outcome. But they didn't, and that contributed to a vast increase in housing costs.

Need rent control - at least in areas where housing would be too expensive without it. Rent control is fair: Building owners are allowed to show whether the controls keep them from getting a good return on their property, and residents are able to show whether the rules are needed to keep housing affordable. Owners have more organization to protect their interests, so there has to be some oversight to protect the public from the artificially high prices that the unregulated market may produce and to sustain affordable housing.

The head of a tenants' group in San Francisco cites his own apartment as an example of how disastrous abolishing rent control would be: His rent would more than double.

The main organization behind the proposed California initiative also wrote Proposition 13, a 1978 measure that ruined the state's tax structure by shifting the tax burden to the poor. Ironically, that measure encouraged cities to abuse eminent domain to convert homes into stores that generate tax revenue, because the cities lost some power to impose property taxes. Doubly ironically, the loss of these homes has contributed to the housing crisis, a situation that justifies rent control. If they don't want rent control, maybe they should repeal Proposition 13.

But nope. They want it all: No rent control and no property taxes. And they'll exploit the eminent domain issue, because that's the only way they can get their real goals enacted. If this succeeds, then pretty soon the Jack Thompson types will try to put eminent domain on a referendum to censor video games just so the censorship idea can pass. That's about what this is like.

(Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/11/18/BAR6TE1EB.DTL;
http://www.tenant.net/Alerts/Guide/papers/dreier/dreier1.html)