In “How Eminent Should Domain Be?,” the NY Times writes about an official in a Westchester County town who understands the connection between property rights and constitutional rights, especially in the involuntary taking of property by the government:
The United States Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that a governmentcould use eminent domain to seize private property for economicdevelopment, including commercial uses like malls. (Some of theproperty for the new headquarters of The New York Times was acquiredthrough eminent domain.) Mr. Bianco felt the ruling was wrong, evenun-American, violating the near-sanctity of a place of one’s own. Sodid fellow townsfolk who asked him, as a member of the Town Council:“Will you ever do that?”
“Not on my watch,” he promised.
LastJanuary, he went further and engineered passage of a law barring thetown from condemning private property for commercial purposes, whileallowing it for traditional public uses, like the building of roads,sewers and schools. A vague declaration that a neighborhood is blightedor dangling a promise of jobs and taxes could not be used toexpropriate a home or shop for a developer’s benefit.
. . .
He compares limits on property expropriation to the limits he facedas a police officer (he rose to detective sergeant, and now works as aninvestigator for Westchester’s Legal Aid Society) “You can’t just go up and search somebody,” he said. “We protect the individual’s rights.”
“Let’sface it,” he went on. “It’s usually done to the lower socioeconomicparts of the population — the people who can’t fight it, don’t have themeans. It’s not happening on one-acre homes in Scarsdale. And that’sdistasteful. You’re picking off the weak.”
Full article.
Update: readers’ reactions to the NYT story.