Eminent Domain

Eminent Domain (or compulsory purchase, for those other folk of you on the English Common Law system).

Surely you are familiar with the concept – this legal concept allows a government (or government agency) to seize one’s personal property without the owner’s consent. Not personal property as in your clothes, etc. Personal property such as your land, your home, your business.
The last, oh, five decades worth of court hearings have held that the government may NOT cease your land unless they can demonstrate that the seizure will benefit the public at large – roads, utilities, military bases. This legal concept has been used in the past to rid cities of public housing – economic redevelopment at it’s finest (ridding yourself of folks who don’t pay taxes or who pay very little for people or companies who can generate tax revenue).

There’s been a case kicking around the Georgia legal system for a few years where a city attempted to condemn an active business so that they could offer them a low ball price for their land in order to build a new city hall. The couple who owned the business would have sold their land to the government, had the government offered a fair market value. Was this done? Nooooo. That particular government agency offered a price that was less than half the fair market; when the owner’s declined to accept the offer, the agency went to court to have this property condemned.

I don’t mean condemned like one condemns a slum lord’s apartment property for having rats and no running water. I mean condemn as into transfer a title from an individual to a government entity.

Now, these folks had an active business in the downtown area of a small city. They paid taxes, they employed staff, they contributed to the economy.

The local government decided that none of this mattered – they wanted that land for a new city hall, by golly, and they were going to get it.

Two years later, finally listening to the rumblings of the public and paying attention to the rulings of other states (and the Supreme Court’s own admission that states had the right to pass their own laws; in light of Kelo v. City of New London that’s a pretty good idea to a bad freaking law), the city settled, paid the legal fees plus interest of the couple, and plans to build their city hall down the street.

I understand the legal necessity of eminent domain. Governments need to be able to buy out or move people in the way – dams would never be built, new roads would never be built, etc. That’s fine. I can see the good for the general public. I take issue with Kelo v. City of New London because the city chose to condemn the homes of private citizens in an area it planned to raze and sell to a developer – the homes were small, old, but largely owned by their occupants. Their occupants were offered a price, they refused, and sued. And they lost – the Supreme Court upheld the right of governments to use eminent domain to seize land that could be repurposed to generate higher tax revenue.

While this ruling may have been in the meaning of the law, it certainly isn’t in the spirit. This says that the state of Georgia can come in, offer me $50,000 for my house, if I refuse, condemn it, and then sell my entire neighborhood to…hm…Wal-Mart. More tax revenue, right? Employs people? For the greater good.

Kiss my ass.