Nathan Newman wrote:
>It's funny-- a thread starts with the question of whether state or federal
>law should be changed to gut local home rule powers, and Doug suddenly
>turns
>it around so that anyone who defends those home rule powers has to also be
>in favor of every abuse that might happen, when the point is that I'm
>defending the positive uses of eminent domain and not giving state
>legislators all control over local planning decisions.
-Fuck, I'm not against eminent domain for real public improvement -purposes, but I think those should be narrowly defined.
By whom? Local residents or state and federal decisionmakers overruling local planning decisions? This goes to a lot of discussions here-- people mix up the substance of the policy with the key issue of Who Decides?
Awful things -have gone on in the name of urban planning; we've just heard some -examples from LA, and I know of plenty from NYC and New Haven (the -laboratory for urban renewal). There's a real prob with eminent -domain as it's actually practiced, and it's not just right-wing -cynics playing on crude populist sentiments.
I'm all for vigorous politics around use of eminent domain and for rules that improve the decision-making process, but not ones that give property owners absolute rights against the majority democratic will. Here are reforms I'd like:
-- no transfer of property to anyone who contributed to local politicians in the last two election cycles -- all eminent domain decisions have to be ratified by full vote of local elected government -- valuation of property (valuations to be based on pre-development and associated zoning changes status) by independent auditors
Those are all reasonable rules to prevent private deals at the expense of the public, but they are done to enhance local democratic control, not gut home rule powers as the present crop of state bills are doing.
Nathan Newman
Nathan Newman