When city planners attack
With the goal of a shopping center in mind, city officials in Millville drafted an ordinance to take land from existing businesses. Tentatively, the ordinance has been tabled:
Over the last few months, city officials had prepared an ordinance authorizing condemnation proceedings in accordance with local redevelopment and housing laws and eminent domain.
Ah, the shotgun approach: throw many different condemnation plans and hope one sticks.
Those who follow eminent domain abuses were cheered by the Michigan Supreme Court’s ruling this summer that it is illegal for the government to seize private land and transfer it to another private owner for public “benefit.”
But that’s one state. The abuses will not end until the U.S. Supreme Court stops the land-grabbers.
The predicate for these abusive eminent domain cases is that a private entity — the government’s good buddy, naturally — will make better use of the land by providing more jobs or greater tax revenue.
Hypocrisy, thy name is the Lancaster County Commission:
Three months after exercising eminent domain to take land for public use, the Lancaster County Commissioners this morning condemned their colleagues in York County for doing the same thing. Lancaster County Commissioner Chairman Pete Shaub today spoke in opposition to the York County Commissioners’ vote in May to take a 79-acre parcel near Wrightsville.
The land, formally a part of Lauxmont Farms, a 766-acre horse farm, was slated to be an upscale housing development called “Highpoint.”
More taking from one private person to give to another.
