Submitted by Michael D. D. White, Mar 14, 2008 11:55

Those defending recent practices in New York are defending abuses that are far worse than typical eminent domain or even the eminent domain that the Supreme Court's Kelo case said states can permit.

What Kelo said you can do is have a private owner be the beneficiary who receives land taken from another by eminent domain in the name of economic development. Kelo says you can do that if government thinks the new private owner will use it better that the old private owner. What is happening in New York which Kelo did not say you can have is developer-initiated, developer-driven eminent domain. The Columbia University West Harlem expansion and Atlantic Yards are cases in point. Kelo may have been a bad decision but there is clearly language in the Kelo case warning that this should not be permitted.

For those keeping track of these things, New York needs more effective movement toward reform. The New York State Bar Association Task Force on Eminent Domain is supporting significant aspects of the current status quo and appears dangerously insensitive to the highly undesirable practices to which developer-initiated, developer-driven eminent domain predictably leads.

Also worth looking at:

Columbia Pulls a Kelo

http://www.nysun.com/article/68407

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