Next month Californians will vote on Proposition 90. The ballot summary reads:
This is being marketed as a simple limitation on the state’s eminent domain power, in response to the Supreme Court’s decision last year in Kelo v. City of New London. In fact it goes a lot further than that: Prop 90 would require the state to compensate any property owner whose property value is depressed by any (new) government regulation of any kind. Environmental, zoning, anything. It’s the wet dream of the property rights movement. It would hamstring government’s ability to act effectively in countless areas.
Does anybody care to defend Prop 90 or the philosophy it represents?
*This article is mainly about the “stealth” political activities of Howard Rich, a New York real estate magnate who has bankrolled the Protect Our Homes Coalition and similar groups in other states. Rich is the chair of Americans for Limited Government and Club for Growth, State Action. This article mentions “similar measures [to Prop 90] in Arizona, Idaho, Nevada and Washington”. Can any Dopers from those states provide details?
Well, if Robert Redford is against it, I’m probably for it.
By strict definition eminent domain is a necessary mechanism for cities to acquire private property for public works. Nobody should have to explain why cities acquiring private property for non-public works is a bad idea. Even legitimate uses of eminent domain rarely compensate the owner sufficiently to make them whole.
But Prop 90 isn’t mainly about eminent domain. It’s about government regulations and actions that depress property values. Any kind of regulations or actions.
If the state does something that happens to increase the value of your property, should you be obliged to send the difference to your tax collector? You will, of course, in the form of an increased property tax if an when your property assessment is adjusted to account for the changed conditions – but that’s just a few extra mills, not the whole value of the appreciation.
I have always advocated the abolition of property taxes and fully support the State’s right to raise income taxes in response.
No, I do not think we need to have a law saying government will compensate a property owner for depressed property values. I think this would create a whole deluge of lawsuits that would be very hard to ever settle because it’s very difficult in most cases to direclty tie depressed property values to any specific thing. Furthemore I don’t really feel the government should have to compensate you for depressed property values since I personally don’t think you should have to compensate the government for increased property values.
I do support laws which attempt to insure eminent domain is a power excercised only for public works and not for resale to private commercial interests.
Rich is behind a similar measure in Oregon. Very bad news, from the perspective of anyone who’s actually looked at the measure and offered an official comment. Big article on Rich and his many out of state measures in the local paper this week.
Yeah, Rich and co are very evil dudes who have written a Prop preying on fears, and hidden their extreme Libertarian agenda within it.
As to cckerberos cite:“New laws and rules also would be exempt from this requirement if government enacted them: (1) to protect public health and safety, (2) under a declared state of emergency, or (3) as part of rate regulation by the California Public Utilities Commission.” those exceptions just mean more lawsuits. In other words, just about anything can be said to “protect public health and safety” but that leaves open a huge expensive lawsuit for the property owner to sue the government as the nasty old government won’t allow the wonderful wise property owner to open a toxic waste dump next to a school.
We have an analogous initiative on the ballot here in Washington: I-933. Links: For and Against.
The opponents say independant research indicates the law would cost the state around 8 billion dollars in lawsuits. Personally, I can’t decide if that number is wildly conservative (because the courts will be buried in suits) or if it’s too high (because the legislature will stop passing good laws because they know they’ll attract lawsuits).
There’s also a sentence saying that economic loss includes “but is not limited to” certain things. This is truly a potential boondoggle, because the definition of “economic loss” has no limits. How tenuous would the connection between government action and crappy business performance have to be before the state would be safe from lawsuits? If the state opens up an area to development, that hurts housing prices in nearby neighborhoods. Is that “economic loss”?
Sure there are…but a REAL libertarian IMHO doesn’t support expanding the government’s reach in any way, and this proposition will have the effect of expanding several areas of the government–more court time and lawyer time to deal with the suits, a new or existing department being expanded to provide assessments of property values for use in those suits, more government expenditures on payouts under this law…
This isn’t libertarian, this is some bizarre sort of Randism punishment of the government.
When I see some local governments seizing grandmas house to give it to a developer so he can build (and sell) a shopping mall, I think some preventive legislation may be in order.
I thought Libertarian’s had a more cynical position on governmental powers and abuses?
