BRAVO Daine Allen!
Battle to Revise Eminent Domain Law Escalates in Trenton
TRENTON, June 15 — For weeks, New Jersey legislators have been frantically writing and amending bills to answer widespread complaints that local governments are too quick to condemn property for redevelopment projects.
The lawmakers have been under pressure to tighten New Jersey's law, which is one of the most permissive in the nation, since the United States Supreme Court ruled a year ago that local governments could use eminent domain to acquire land for economic development, in addition to traditional purposes like building roads and schools.
But so far, the lawmakers' efforts have infuriated most of those who called for change — and who now say the legislation does little more than give residents better notice that their property is going to be seized.
"The reason we are having this problem in the first place is that there's eminent domain abuse," David Pringle, the campaign director of the New Jersey Environmental Federation, said after a Senate committee hearing here on Thursday, where only supporters of the proposed legislation were permitted to testify. "And it's the abusers who are writing the law."
....The United States Supreme Court decision, Kelo v. New London, brought a reaction that forged an unusual coalition of conservative Republican property rights advocates and groups like the Environmental Federation, South Jersey Legal Services and the Coalition for Affordable Housing and the Environment.
The state's new public advocate, Ronald K. Chen, shares most of their concerns; he issued a report last month that said the state had not adequately protected property owners and tenants.
The furor has forced the hand of the Democrats who dominate the Legislature, many of whom are local officials themselves or work for law firms and other businesses active in redevelopment work.
....And Senator Diane B. Allen, a Burlington County Republican, urged Mr. Rice's committee on Thursday to consider a moratorium on eminent domain. During any delay, Senator Allen said, "we're going to have people's homes taken from them inappropriately, immorally, and in my mind, unethically and illegally."
Senator Fred H. Madden Jr., a Democrat from Turnersville, said he would support a moratorium, too. "In traveling around South Jersey," Senator Madden said, "eminent domain always comes up, almost as often as property taxes." (source)
