Mich. Supreme Court strikes down 1981 Poletown decision (Eminent Domain gets limited!!!!)

AP ^ | 7-30-04 | David Eggert

[AnimalLover]

Bump

[Carry_Okie]

The government must take 15 acres of land for "mitigation" for every one acre it uses, which causes a lot of the land grabbing.

Is this actually a written policy or is it just how things have worked out?

[Libertina]

Carry_Okie, from what I have heard, it is written - but I would need to check. At some point, there would be NO building unless we took land from another state... LOL

Right now Pierce County is looking at a "Directions" package that actually tells shoreline owners HOW MANY trees they must have, HOW they must PRUNE them, what KIND of plants etc. It is bizarre. But if some of this isn't passed, a single citizen ( read: whaco enviro-nazi) can go as an interested party to an unelected arbitration board who can then overturn the council's vote and impose ALL sections of the proposed regulations.

In King County, (Seattle area) the new Directions proposal says that rural land OWNERS (lol) can use only 1/10th of their property for impervious surfaces - it establishes the kind of species, no-touch zones attached to buffer zones etc. Even more draconian. Basically, the citizens will only pay for their land, not own it.

As for urban areas which really cause most of the trouble and breed most of the troublemakers...they are "exempt" because they have "agreed to accept the bad environment" and aren't required to "give" any more...

[Carry_Okie]

As for urban areas which really cause most of the trouble and breed most of the troublemakers...they are "exempt" because they have "agreed to accept the bad environment" and aren't required to "give" any more...

A specific exemption for "useful idiots" somehow constitutes equal protection under the law. Maybe it's affirmative action for stupidity.

[MamaTexan]

"in order to vindicate our Constitution, protect the people's property rights and preserve the legitimacy of the judicial branch as the expositor, not creator, of fundamental law."

Yeee-HAW!

[Carry_Okie]

Anyway, while researching it, I became absolutely appalled at the number of states which allow the state to take your property by force and then give it or sell it to another private owner. It's outrageous.

Believe it or not, the legal pioneer in that endeavor was Abraham Lincoln. He pulled a number of such eminent domain takings for the benefit of railroads and barge companies in Illinios. Typical Whig.

[tahiti]

"Neither in our Constitution, nor in the constitutions of other States of the Union, is there any express provision forbidding the Legislature to pass laws whereby the private property of one citizen may be taken and transferred to another for his private use."

Missouri Constitution (as ratified in 1876 and still valid today)

Bill of Rights, Article 1, Section 28

That private property shall not be taken for private use with or without compensation, unless by consent of the owner, except for private ways of necessity, and except for drains and ditches across the lands of others for agricultural and sanitary purposes, in the manner prescribed by law; and that when an attempt is made to take private property for a use alleged to be public, the question whether the contemplated use be public shall be judicially determined without regard to any legislative declaration that the use is public.

So I do not think the author of Fallsburg was accurate in their remark.

[Constitutionalist Conservative]

"We overrule Poletown," Young wrote, "in order to vindicate our Constitution, protect the people's property rights and preserve the legitimacy of the judicial branch as the expositor, not creator, of fundamental law."

Oh, how I'd love to see words like these in a majority opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court!

[jennyp]

Oh my God, they reversed the Poletown decision?!?!?

WOO HOO!

Next thing ya know they'll be telling us Bush is leading in Michigan. :-)

[kako]

FANTASTIC!!!!

First bit of good domestic news I've heard in years.

The local pols (who are RINOS) in my small town in Kentucky currently have two eminent domain glom fests involving over a thousand pieces of private property.

This may slow them down.

[Dan from Michigan]

BUMP with the SCOTUS decision.