Property rights aren’t sexy, but the quietly brewing battle over them will likely serve as the defining civil rights struggle of this century.
While Americans frequently consider race, gender or class discrimination as significant barriers to equality, eminent domain abuse – the forcible taking of property for a non-public purpose – should also top this list. When government and corporations force people out of their homes and small businesses, families lose the hard-earned equity from their most important investments, and society loses a tool essential to uplifting our nation’s most vulnerable.
In June 2005, a 5-4 majority of the U.S. Supreme Court embraced, in Kelo vs. New London, the practice of government planners and large corporations clearing out families, small businesses and entire neighborhoods to make way for tax-rich private developments.
While Colorado law provides that eminent domain can only be used for remedying “blight” or “slum” conditions, the Supreme Court’s decision is mobilizing government planners to take homes or businesses across the state in the name of economic development and private gain.
Steve Nadler is one small-business owner living this reality. Nadler is currently under attack by the Sheridan Redevelopment Agency and a private developer who want to turn his business into a massive retail development. Nadler’s case could help set the stage for an essential public dialogue over how and when we allow government to take private property.
Government lobbyists contend eminent domain is necessary to rejuvenate Colorado’s aging neighborhoods. However, they fail to mention that it is only necessary if developers and government want to drive down the value of the properties they are seeking to condemn and redevelop.
Buzz and Peggy Kilker, owners of Buzz’s Auto Body in Aurora, experienced this after the city included their business as part of a blight designation that encompassed the neighborhood surrounding the newly rehabilitated Fitzsimons Health Sciences Center. The Kilkers spent six years fighting off condemnation before the city abandoned the project last year.
“It’s amazing what happens when the free market is forced to work,” Buzz Kilker said. “When they put a blight designation on the area, they know no one will buy it. When they can’t hold that over your head, it’s a whole different story.”
While the Kilkers narrowly escaped the grasp of eminent domain, others have not been so lucky. Paul Kozik, an elderly Arvada resident, saw his sole source of income, a modest storefront, bulldozed by city planners in 2004 allegedly to make way for a private development. Nearly two years after its demolition, the property is an empty parking lot with the Arvada Urban Renewal Authority desperately soliciting offers for its redevelopment.
A proposed constitutional amendment, if passed by voters in November, would define the acceptable uses of eminent domain in Colorado’s constitution, specifically prohibiting government from taking someone’s home or business for the purpose of turning it over to a private developer for a private business.
Lawmakers also have begun calling for reforms, with Reps. Cory Gardner, Lynn Hefley and Al White and Sen. Tom Wiens all introducing bills to address eminent domain abuse. Gardner’s bill, HB 1099, would prevent governments from taking land to transfer the land to a private party.
As our state continues to grow and the amount of vacant land available for development diminishes, developers and government planners will only find eminent domain more tempting as a tool to bring in lucrative private developments. If we fail to protect property rights, we have missed a key opportunity to empower working families and small-business owners in their pursuit of the American dream.
Jessica Peck Corry, director of the Independence Institute’s Property Rights Project, is the author of “At the Crossroads of Condemnation: The Debate Over Eminent Domain For Private Development & Open Space.”
