As I have said in the past (over and over), there can’t be real reform that addresses economic development takings without also addressing blight laws. The government doesn’t just come out and say it is going to take private property from citizen A and give it to citizen B for economic development.
The usual tactic is to define an area as “blighted” which can mean whatever the legislature decides, and then take property within that area and transfer it to a developer. In this example, is the property being taken for economic development? For courts, the answer often is no–the property is being taken to address blight.
In many instances, the government that is seizing the property already has a developer in mind before declaring an area as blighted, or even if they don’t, they would never bother to define an area as blighted in the first place if their real purpose wasn’t to develop the area—in other words, governments call something a blighted area only when they want to develop it.
Blight becomes a pretext for economic development takings.
This Reason blog post discusses a recent New York case where a court struck down attempts by the government to abuse eminent domain by using blight as a pretext for an economic development taking. It is a good case study in this type of abuse.
HT: MS
