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<div><tt><font color="#000000">This is so scary I can't believe it. I
urge anyone concerned locally to get serious about participating in
the City and County P&Z's and the Latah Economic Development
Committee as the likely places where such a now-sanctioned abuse of
governmental power would originate.</font></tt></div>
<div><tt><font color="#000000"><br></font></tt></div>
<div><tt><font color="#000000">Mark Solomon</font></tt></div>
<div><tt><font size="+1" color="#000000">*******<br>
<b>June 23, 2005<br>
<br>
</b></font><font size="+3" color="#000000"><b>Justices Refuse to
Increase Land-Use Oversight<br>
<br>
</b></font><font color="#000000"><b> By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS<br>
<br>
<br>
</b><font size="+1">WASHINGTON (AP) -- A divided Supreme Court ruled
that local governments may seize people's homes and businesses against
their will for private development in a decision anxiously awaited in
communities where economic growth conflicts with individual property
rights.<br>
<br>
Thursday's 5-4 ruling represented a defeat for some Connecticut
residents whose homes are slated for destruction to make room for an
office complex. They argued that cities have no right to take their
land except for projects with a clear public use, such as roads or
schools, or to revitalize blighted areas.<br>
<br>
As a result, cities now have wide power to bulldoze residences for
projects such as shopping malls and hotel complexes in order to
generate tax revenue.<br>
<br>
Local officials, not federal judges, know best in deciding whether a
development project will benefit the community, justices said.<br>
<br>
"The city has carefully formulated an economic development that
it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community,
including -- but by no means limited to -- new jobs and increased tax
revenue," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority.<br>
<br>
He was joined by Justice Anthony Kennedy, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader
Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.<br>
<br>
At issue was the scope of the Fifth Amendment, which allows
governments to take private property through eminent domain if the
land is for "public use."<br>
<br>
Susette Kelo and several other homeowners in a working-class
neighborhood in New London, Conn., filed suit after city officials
announced plans to raze their homes for a riverfront hotel, health
club and offices.<br>
<br>
New London officials countered that the private development plans
served a public purpose of boosting economic growth that outweighed
the homeowners' property rights, even if the area wasn't blighted.<br>
<br>
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who has been a key swing vote on many
cases before the court, issued a stinging dissent. She argued that
cities should not have unlimited authority to uproot families, even if
they are provided compensation, simply to accommodate wealthy
developers.<br>
<br>
The lower courts had been divided on the issue, with many allowing a
taking only if it eliminates blight.<br>
<br>
"Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private
party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random,"
O'Connor wrote. "The beneficiaries are likely to be those
citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political
process, including large corporations and development firms."<br>
<br>
She was joined in her opinion by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist,
as well as Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.<br>
<br>
Nationwide, more than 10,000 properties were threatened or condemned
in recent years, according to the Institute for Justice, a Washington
public interest law firm representing the New London homeowners.<br>
<br>
New London, a town of less than 26,000, once was a center of the
whaling industry and later became a manufacturing hub. More recently
the city has suffered the kind of economic woes afflicting urban areas
across the country, with losses of residents and jobs.<br>
<br>
The New London neighborhood that will be swept away includes
Victorian-era houses and small businesses that in some instances have
been owned by several generations of families. Among the New London
residents in the case is a couple in their 80s who have lived in the
same home for more than 50 years.<br>
<br>
City officials envision a commercial development that would attract
tourists to the Thames riverfront, complementing an adjoining Pfizer
Corp. research center and a proposed Coast Guard
museum.</font></font></tt></div>
<div><tt><font size="+1" color="#000000"><br>
New London was backed in its appeal by the National League of Cities,
which argued that a city's eminent domain power was critical to
spurring urban renewal with development projects such Baltimore's
Inner Harbor and Kansas City's Kansas Speedway.<br>
<br>
Under the ruling, residents still will be entitled to "just
compensation" for their homes as provided under the Fifth
Amendment. However, Kelo and the other homeowners had refused to move
at any price, calling it an unjustified taking of their property.<br>
</font></tt></div>
<div><font face="Arial" size="-2" color="#000066">Copyright 2005 The
New York Times Company</font></div>
<div><font face="Arial" size="-2" color="#000000"><br></font></div>
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