May 31, 2006

Nashville Government Seized Private Property for Condos

A year ago, when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its controversial Kelo decision which empowers state and local governments to use eminent domain to seize private property in order to give it to a private developer to redevelop, for essentially any reason the government deems necessary, some observers said post-Kelo reforms to Tennessee's eminent domain laws weren't necessary because eminent domain wasn't abused in Tennessee. But today's Nashville City Paper has a report on a Nashville man whose property was indeed seized by government and handed over to a private developer, short-circuiting the property owner's own attempt to redevelop the property himself. And the property wasn't taken for a "public use" - a new school or a road, for example - which is the nomal reason for eminent domain.

The property was seized so a private developer could build condos.

This happened in 2001, before the Kelo decision. Eminent domain WAS abused in Tennessee before Kelo. It WILL be abused more in the wake of the Kelo decision. And the legislature did virtually nothing about it in the last session.

For more BillHobbs.com postings on Kelo, click here.