The Virginia General Assembly is currently considering competing bills that would limit the use of eminent domain by the state and local governments. As the Washington Times points out in an editorial this morning, though, there are significant and important differences between the two bills.
In the wake of last year’s Supreme Court’s decision in Kelo v. City of New London (which gives government the authority to deprive someone of his property in order to give it to someone who can use it to generate more jobs or tax revenue), some well-deserved attention is being focused on Virginia’s seriously flawed eminent-domain laws. On the facing page, Steven Anderson, a lawyer with the Castle Coalition, makes a powerful case that the Old Dominion’s current laws do a poor job of protecting small property owners who want to defend their homes and businesses from large companies and governmental bodies who covet them.
Both the Virginia Senate and the House of Delegates have passed versions of “reform.” As Mr. Anderson points out, Senate Bill 394 is a real reform bill. It limits the use of eminent domain to cases where the public at large or the government will own or occupy the property in question. But the major legislative alternative, House Bill 94, leaves the government free to take property in order to turn it over to large businesses, like big-box stores or prospective developers of shopping malls. House and Senate negotiators are currently engaged in difficult, protracted negotiations that will determine what kind of protections Virginians will have against local government leviathans who want to take their land for private profit.
Clearly the Senate bill is the one that will truly protect property rights and limit the reach of the Supreme Court’s decision in Kelo v. City of New London. Here’s hoping that Virginia’s legislators agree.
Technorati Tags: Virginia, Virginia Politics, Kelo, Eminent Domain, Property Rights
