It is official – not only can the government take your property and give it to a private developer, private developers with political clout can now legally engage in extortion against land and business owners using the threat of eminent domain action.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday bypassed an opportunity to revisit or limit its much-disputed 2005 ruling that upheld governmental power to use eminent domain to foster economic development.

Without comment, the justices declined to hear a case from Port Chester in Westchester County, N.Y., that challenged the villageÂ’s use of eminent domain in a dispute between a property owner and a private company designated as the developer of a run-down 27-acre urban renewal area.

The redevelopment plan, adopted by Port Chester in 1999, envisioned a retail area that would include a drugstore. In 2002, the developer, G & S Port Chester LLC, announced that a Walgreens store would be part of the project. But Bart Didden, the owner of the parcel where the store was to sit, had by that time separately entered into a lease with a competing drugstore chain, CVS.

After negotiations between Mr. Didden and G & S Port Chester failed, the village sided with its developer and notified the property owner that his half-acre parcel would be taken by eminent domain and made available for the developer’s use. Mr. Didden and his business partner, Domenick Bologna, brought a lawsuit in 2004 arguing that Port Chester’s condemnation of the property was not for a true “public use,” the phrase that identifies the constitutionally permissible use of the eminent domain power, but rather for the private financial benefit of the developer.

In other words, the government can now pick and choose who is the economic winner when there is a set redevelopment plan. There was already a drugstore slated to go on that parcel – the government simply decided that it would take the land and give it to G & S Port Chester to build a drugstore unless G & S Port Chester got a financial stake in already existing drugstore project. Where is the public use or benefit of this decision?

The failure to take and decide this case merely reinforces the question I asked after Kelo – does private property still exist in the United States, despite the guarantees of the United States Constitution?

Posted by: Greg at 11:34 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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