MyDD :: Eminent Domain and the Brooklyn Arena

Eminent Domain and the Brooklyn Arena

by brooklyngreenie, Sun Jun 26, 2005 at 10:28:01 PM EST

An audible groan could be heard on Thursday amongst the opponents of the Brooklyn Nets arena and development debacle courtesy of Bruce Ratner (aka C.M. Burns) and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz (aka Mayor Quimby), when the supreme court ruling on Eminent Domain was handed down by the so-called liberal coalition of the court.

Bad enough that media whore Markowitz and billionaire-soon-to-be multi-billionaire Ratner have managed to run an end-run around New York's City Council (yes, the local goverment of a city of 8 million will have no say in the if/ how/why the debacle is planned/executed/funded), but now we have the 'liberal' justices on the court giving Ratner, Wal-Mart, Ikea, and just about anybody who has enough money to buy off a local election or local politician free reign to destroy your home or business.

Well, I'm mad, and I'm not going to take it anymore....

Time for a constitutional ammendment baring Eminent Domain abuse for corporate interests (and restrictions on Eminent Domain abuse for government public use as well).

It's also time for a new Brooklyn Borough President. No democrat or republican has stepped forward to challenge Markowitz, so a Green candidate has. Go meet Gloria Mattera, and while you're there, drop a dime in the slot (with the usual penny added), especially if you are an NYC resident, as your donation (up to $250) will be matched by the NYC campaign finance board 4-to-1 if she reaches $50,000 in matchable donations.

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Blight is in the eye of the beholder (3.00 / 2)

The New London decision was a Supreme Misunderstanding. Allow me to add a comment I made this morning and add just a couple of block quotes from a redevelopment primer, Blight Makes Right:

All a city need do to justify creation or expansion of a redevelopment area is to declare it "blighted".

This is easily done. State law is so vague that most anything has been designated as "blight". Parkland, new residential areas, professional baseball stadiums, oil fields, shopping centers, orange groves, open desert and dry riverbeds have all been designated as "blight" for redevelopment purposes.

To make a finding of blight, a consultant is hired to conduct a study. New redevelopment areas are largely driven by city staff, who choose the consultant with the approval of the city council. Consultants know their job is not to determine if there is blight, but to declare blighted whatever community conditions may be.

Blight has been discovered in some of California's most affluent cities. Indian Wells, a guard-gated community with an average $210,000 household income, has two separate redevelopment areas.

To eliminate alleged blight, a redevelopment agency, once created, has four extraordinary powers held by no other government authority:

(1.) Tax Increment: A redevelopment agency has the exclusive use of all increases in property tax revenues ("tax increment") generated in its designated project areas.

(2.) Bonded Debt: An agency has the power to sell bonds secured against future tax increment, and may do so without voter approval.

(3.) Business Subsidies: An agency has the power to give public money directly to developers and other private businesses in the form of cash grants, tax rebates, free land or public improvements.

(4.) Eminent Domain: An agency has expanded powers to condemn private property, not just for public use, but to transfer to other private owners.

These four powers represent an enormous expansion of government intrusion into our traditional system of private property and free enterprise.

The Constitution is supposed to protect private property and the rights of the minority. There is nothing in the Constitution that provides an economic development exception that allows corporations to steal someone's home if they can bribe a few crooked politicians.

Developers will almost always have more money and political influence than the small number of working people who are forced out of their homes and small businesses for a ballpark, a Walmart or a shopping mall. Using eminent domain to take homes away from working people and give them to wealthy developers is just wrong.

by Gary Boatwright on Sun Jun 26, 2005 at 11:12:05 PM EST

blight in Prospect Heights? (3.00 / 1)

It will only heighten the hypocracy, when the ESDC decides that Prospect heights, one of the hottest neighborhoods in the city, is blighted and needs to be torn down for another Forest City Ratner monstrocity. The only thing in that neighborhood that qualifies as blighted by my standards is Ratner's godawful Atlantic Center and his Metrotech down the street.

Vote for a true progressive in November: Cynthia McKinney (GRN) for President!

by brooklyngreenie on Sun Jun 26, 2005 at 11:20:49 PM EST

Re: blight in Prospect Heights? (none / 0)

You hit the nail on the head. Downtown Brooklyn is not a blighted area. Prosepect Heights, Fort Greene, Boerum Hill and Park Slope are already heavily gentrified. Ratner is just trying to increase the value of his existing downtown properties.

Councilwoman James and the Develop, Don't Destroy Coalition have put together an alternative development plan based on supporting "left behind" segments of the community and creating space for smaller retail, a new park and new mixed-income housing. They've brought in other elected officials and grassroots community groups. Congressman Owens and others have pushed the Navy Yards as a better stadium location. (Disclosure: I lived in BK for most of the past decade.)

In the end, eminent domain may still be necessary to create those new businesses, parks and affordable housing. Eminent Domain is just a tool of the gov't officials like the filibuster, its our job to keep them honest.

by Read Black N Green on Mon Jun 27, 2005 at 12:19:03 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: blight in Prospect Heights? (none / 0)

Brooklyn obviously has a higher class of local politicians than we do in California. How do you manage to get honest politicians elected? San Diego just had an election for Mayor that the development crowd stole from the legitimate winner.

Economic development is not an ultimate good. Economic development is not more important than justice. Even without knowing anything about the local conditions in Brooklyn, I'll predict that the alternative development plan is either ignored or co-opted with massive concessions to wealthy developers. That's the way it always works.

If the Navy Yards are agreed to by the developers and the team or teams that will play in the stadium, the city will give away tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars in tax concessions, rent rebates and naming rights. That's the way it always works.

The only way to permanently stop crooked politicians is by having Constitutional, legislative and procedural safeguards that keep them honest. If the law allows them to steal, they will steal. They always have and they always will.

The Federalist Papers No. 51:

The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments

A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions. This policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as well as public

Second. It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure.

Or if a powerful and wealthy minority is united by their common greed, the rights of a small number of poor homeowners will be insecure.

This paragraph no longer seems to be true:

In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature, where the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger; and as, in the latter state, even the stronger individuals are prompted, by the uncertainty of their condition, to submit to a government which may protect the weak as well as themselves; so, in the former state, will the more powerful factions or parties be gradnally induced, by a like motive, to wish for a government which will protect all parties, the weaker as well as the more powerful.

Corporations are no longer interested in protecting the rights of their workers or the community they do business in. They rapaciously devour and pillage the very community that their existence depends on. Then they move to the Pacific Rim.

Here is the classic expression of the necessity for structural checks on abuse of power:

The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

There are not enough structural checks on abuse of the power of emminent domain. It is being abused because it can be abused, and because a small number of people make a ton of money in the process. Elections and an appeal to the better nature of politicians is not sufficient protection against political corruption.

by Gary Boatwright on Mon Jun 27, 2005 at 02:53:00 AM EST
[ Parent ]

The Coalition for Redevelopment Reform (none / 0)

There are all kinds of links at The Coalition for Redevelopment Reform.

California Democrats better pay very close attention to Don't Like Supreme Court Decision. McClintock is a rabid fiscal conservative who has carved a very large niche among California voters. It is likely he would win a Republican primary challenge against The Ahnold:

Senator Tom McClintock released the following statement on the United States Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. City of New London, Connecticut.

McClintock to introduce an amendment to the California Constitution to restore the original meaning of the property protections in the Bill of Rights:

"Today the U.S. Supreme Court broke the social compact by striking down one of Americans' most fundamental rights. Their decision nullifies the Constitution's Public Use clause and opens an era when the rich and powerful may use government to seize the property of ordinary citizens for private gain."
"The responsibility now falls on the various states to reassert and restore the property rights of their citizens. I am today announcing my intention to introduce an amendment to the California Constitution to restore the original meaning of the property protections in the Bill of Rights. This amendment will require that the government must either own the property it seizes through eminent domain or guarantee the public the legal right to use the property. In addition, it will require that such property must be restored to the original owner or his rightful successor, if the government ceased to use it for the purpose of the eminent domain action."

I totally agree with McClintock and so will a lot of California voters in both parties. This is a perfect Constitutional amendment that the Democrats would be wise to endorse.

by Gary Boatwright on Sun Jun 26, 2005 at 11:56:56 PM EST

the devil's in the details (none / 0)

while i'm all for limiting the abuse of eminent domain - esp. with well-connected developers disposessing regular people for profit - we need to be very, very careful about anything the right throws up WRT eminent domain, because their agenda will be to use it to limit laws protecting green space, wilderness or environmental protections in general. we need to be right on top of the definition of "public good" if we are to avoid being taken to the cleaners by mcclintock and his buddies at the howard jarvis institute. writing a better proposition would be one way to make sure we're constraining developers and not progressive local governments.

by wu ming on Mon Jun 27, 2005 at 12:47:56 AM EST
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