Perry veto means land grabs

June 18, 2007

Gina Parker Ford, Opinion, WACO TRIBUNE

The right to own and enjoy private property is one of the most basic rights of our free society.

The 80th Legislature clearly understood that in passing HB 2006, which provides owners of private property with necessary protections and checks against the government power of eminent domain. Friday, Gov. Rick Perry vetoed it.

House author Beverly Woolley, R-Houston, said the bill attempted to “make condemnation a level playing field,” since the current eminent domain laws are “tilted in favor of condemning entities and against property owners.”

Eminent domain, also referred to as condemnation, is the process by which government takes property from the private owner for a stated public use, such as the construction of a highway. The Texas Constitution qualifies the raw power of eminent domain with two requirements: lands that are taken must be put to “public use” and “adequate compensation” must be provided to the aggrieved owners.

Courts have watered down those protections through increasingly broad interpretations. The state Supreme Court, for example, has made eminent domain a cheaper and easier option for governments, to the detriment of Texans’ private property rights.

In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that economic development can serve as a “public use” — that is, businesses need not purchase their own properties; the government can just condemn property for them.

In the dissenting opinion, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor warned, “Nothing is to prevent the State from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory.”

HB 2006 sought to right those wrongs. By narrowly defining “public use,” it would have limited frivolous takings. Shopping malls are great, but they are not a “public use” that warrants seizing homes and businesses.

It would have required that a government make a “bona fide offer” to purchase property before taking it. Sitting down eye-to-eye and face-to face before a condemnation is the adult way to solve things. Without a “bona fide offer” to purchase, eminent domain is nothing more than the bully kid on the playground.

HB 2006 required that courts consider all factors in determining “adequate compensation.” The bill also contained various measures of transparency so that when it comes to eminent domain, everything is conducted under the watchful eyes of interested individuals and voters.

The Texas Department of Transportation reportedly told the governor that if the bill was signed into law, the cost of road construction will skyrocket.

Despite rhetoric to the contrary, that would not have stopped transportation projects. It simply would have reinstated and restored many of the rules under which Texas operated for decades.

Perry’s veto is a repudiation of a vast majority of lawmakers and of landowners who stand to lose now to state land grabs.