July 31, 2005

Confusing the Issue

I can't tell if Larry Daughtrey is for or against the Supreme Court's recent decision in Kelo v. New London, but it's rather obvious from The Tennessean columnist's latest commentary that he doesn't fully understand the decision. If he did, he wouldn't write a sentence like this:

In essence the court upheld the status quo since it said states and cities can use eminent domain however they wish.

Before Kelo, states and cities could take private property for "public use" or "public purpose" - or for redevelopment if the property was "blighted." What Kelo did was strip those phrases of all meaning - "public purpose" can now mean anything the state or city decides it wants it to mean. And your property does not have to be "blighted" to be taken.

In the Kelo case, the city of New London, Conn., decided that increasing tax revenue by taking several well-maintained middle class homes and giving them to a private developer who would build something else on the site and pay higher property tax was a "public purpose."

The fallout of the ruling is that your local or state government can now auction off your property to the highest bidder, with the blessing of the Supreme Court.

Lance Frizzell emails to note, too, that Daughtrey managed to slip a "whopper" into his column, when he wrote the following:

As usual, when the legislature rushes into things to curry public favor, it risks the law of unintended consequences. No one wants to condemn someone's farm to give Wal-Mart more space, but what about industrial parks? And, in a time of diminishing tax revenues, public-private developments (such as Nashville's new ballpark) are increasingly common.

One other problem with that paragraph: the proposed Nashville Sounds ballpark that Daughtrey uses as an example of a "public-private" partnership did't involve eminent domain. The plan would redevelop the site of the old Nashville Thermal Transfer plant - land the city already owned.