Bulldozing property owners

Wish I'd said that!

[Reprinted from Issues & Views February 11, 2002]

And yet another update on that Mississippi/Nissan story, which we covered on September 24, and again on December 3. Here, the Wall Street Journal (1/4/02) joins its voice to the critics of Mississippi's heavy-handed attempt to wrest land from its citizens:

Can a state seize land on behalf of a private corporation in the name of economic development? Mississippi's efforts to uproot homeowners from their land so it can be used for a Nissan truck factory is only the latest example of how eminent domain is being abused for private and political gain. . . .

Mississippi argues that as a poor state it has the right to seek the "highest and best use" of land to create needed jobs. But if that's the case then the takings clause of the U.S. Constitution means nothing because a government can always find a "better" use for someone's private property. . . .

After years of slumber, citizens and courts are waking up to the abuses eminent domain can create. In 2000, voters in Baltimore County, Maryland, repealed a law giving the county government expanded powers to use eminent domain for economic development. Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy abandoned plans to use eminent domain to redevelop his downtown after citizen protests. . . .

Even New Jersey's activist liberal Supreme Court has ruled that a state development agency was out of bounds in seizing property to provide additional parking for a casino owned by Donald Trump.

No one argues that struggling cities or states don't have a right to improve themselves through redevelopment. But care must be taken that that right doesn't extend to land seizures from which politically connected players stand to gain far more than the general public.

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