Archive 2007 January 9 Port Chester News Wire

Even More About Didden, G And S, Logan and The Board Of Trustees

This is starting to get boring.



Kelo-Property Rights Update: An Awful Case May Get Heard by the Supremes

Filed under: Economy, Taxes & Government — TBlumer @ 7:39 am

This second item (HT Russell’s Rhetoric) is difficult for me to present without violating the site’s PG-13 standard, but here it is:

Bart Didden wanted to put a CVS pharmacy on his property in Port Chester, N.Y. He even obtained approvals from the local planning board.

But because a portion of the CVS site was in a blighted redevelopment zone, Mr. Didden was told that planning board approval wasn’t enough. He’d have to reach an understanding with a private company that had been selected by Port Chester officials to control all construction inside the renewal zone.

The developer, Gregg Wasser of G&S Port Chester, told Didden he’d have to pay $800,000 or give G&S a 50 percent stake in the CVS business. If Didden refused, Mr. Wasser said, he would have Port Chester condemn and seize his property and instead of a CVS he’d put a Walgreens drugstore on the site.

Didden refused. The next day, the Village of Port Chester began legal proceedings to seize Didden’s land by eminent domain.

Lawyers for Didden took the matter to federal court. They even went to the FBI - all to no avail. Now they are asking the US Supreme Court to examine whether a private company can demand payment in exchange for refraining to seize private property in an urban renewal zone.

Property rights activists are hoping that a majority of the justices view Didden’s case as an opportunity to clarify a portion of the high court’s controversial decision in its last big eminent domain case, Kelo v. New London. In that June 2005 opinion, the court ruled 5-to-4 that local governments could seize private property and turn it over to a private developer when the action was part of an economic development project of benefit to the public.

So the bad news is that this is the kind of overarching tyranny those who opposed the Kelo ruling feared. The good news is that it could be reviewed by the Supreme Court, which, with the arrival of two new justices since the infamous June 2005 ruling, might decide to rule in a sweeping fashion, perhaps overturning Kelo. Another piece of good news is that the Institute for Justice is involved

[via BizzyBlog.com]