Out of Control

The Pacific Legal Foundation's Timothy Sandefur has a long piece on the history and implications of eminent domain in March's Liberty magazine. Here's a taste:

"With the eminent domain power thus unmoored, the result was predictable to public choice theorists: the power to redistribute property fell into the hands, not of the most deserving, but of the most politically adept. As government became capable of transferring unlimited amounts of land between private parties, the business community began investing an ever-increasing amount in lobbying to persuade it to give the land to them. These companies portray the redistribution of land as a benefit to the community, in the form of job creation and increased funding for public services, as well as an eradication of "economic blight," a vague term attached to any neighborhood that is less than affluent but not an actual slum. Meanwhile, government officials have come to see their roles, not as defenders of the public's safety and welfare, but as sculptors of neighborhoods, for whom citizens and land are raw materials to be formed into the ideal community.

. . . .

But this marriage of government and private industry doesn't just benefit bureaucrats eager to be seen as "creating jobs" and "cleaning up the community." It also yields enormous boons for companies that are adept at political persuasion. Recent articles in The Wall Street Journal and Mother Jones have detailed the enormous pressure that Home Depot, Bed Bath & Beyond, Wal-Mart, Target, and especially Costco, exert on governments to give them somebody else's real estate. These efforts can be extremely enticing to government officials pursuing "the vision thing," not to mention local residents desperate for new jobs. The plans are presented with a smooth and authoritative style — with sophisticated PowerPoint presentations including lovely artist's renditions of gleaming new streets and bustling pedestrian malls — that is hard for bureaucrats to resist. There's even a website, eminentdomainonline.com, which bills itself as "an internet based business to government (b2g) clearinghouse for professionals in the eminent domain, right of way, and infrastructure development fields." If the lobbying efforts should include donations to mayoral election campaigns, and promises to fund giant public works projects on the side, so much the better. As one city planner told Mother Jones, "The reality is that you need to rely on developer interest in order to facilitate projects. We're not paying for this party." (Conveniently enough, the Internal Revenue Code allows money expended by a company seeking to persuade a city official to exert eminent domain to be deducted from the company's gross income when determining income tax liability.)

. . . .

To city planners, your neighborhood is theirs to shape as they please. The fact that a business uses condemned land for its own profit is irrelevant to them because private businesses are public uses, in their minds. They are the tools by which society creates jobs and provides people with goods. President Eisenhower once warned the nation about the military-industrial complex, but today local governments are wrapped up in the Costco-WalMart-Home Depot complex. They believe in what they call "partnerships" between government and private industry in which government and corporations decide the shape and layout of whole neighborhoods, with no regard for the rights of the landowners who stand in their way."

Read the whole thing; it's a good primer on the eminent domain issue. In fairness, a lot of urban planners are wary of eminent domain, but I think there's a lot of validity to the point that planners generally (and unconsciously) tend to view most things, even private property and businesses, as being in the public sphere and thus malleable in pursuit of their aims.

For more, check out our Eminent Domain Resource Center.