Ward: Never Mind

by Paul Bass | November 15, 2005 8:56 PM | | Comments (3)

State House Minority Leader Bob Ward of North Branford ventured into New Haven Tuesday night and ‘fessed up: He has quietly called off his embarrassing request for a state investigation into Mayor John DeStefano’s use of heavy machinery at a press conference to take a whack at the New Haven Coliseum.

Ward came to the New Haven Free Public Library to speak to an Urban Design League-sponsored forum on eminent domain. Before the event, he was asked about the tempest over his Nov. 2 call for the state attorney general to look into whether Democrat DeStefano broke any laws by operating the machinery without a license. That call led to stories in the media statewide belittling the usually low-key and level-headed Republican for petty (and ridiculous) political partisanship. DeStefano milked the episode for all the publicity he could get.

Ward said last night that he wrote a letter to state public safety commissioner Leonard Boyle (to whom the matter had been bounced) asking him to cancel the request for the investigation. Ward said he never alerted the press because he’d already received enough embarrassing publicity — justifiably.

“I chalked it up to a momentary lapse in judgment,” Ward said. “I saw him [DeStefano] on TV” and got annoyed. He should have kept his annoyance to himself, he said, rather than make an issue out of it, because he’s not just any regular Joe watching the news. He’s the minority leader of the State House of Representatives.

“As a minority leader, if you’re annoyed by minor things, you should ignore it and concentrate on big things,” Ward said. “I should have recognized that it would be seen as unnecessary partisanship.” He said he asked Boyle in the letter “not to spend any more public time investigating it.”


Eminent Change

Ward found a more receptive New Haven audience for his message at Tuesday night’s eminent domain forum. He has emerged as the legislature’s leading proponent of stopping the runaway government bulldozer that has been wrecking poor and working-class families’ homes for development projects.

Ward led the Connecticut response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 23 decision in Kelo vs. New London. The court allowed New London to seize working-class families’ homes through the power of eminent domain in order to demolish their neighborhood to make way for a Pfizer Corporation-backed plan to possibly one day build an upscale new development. The court majority expressed sympathy for the homeowners. But it said that current law allows governments to take land away for economic development projects — even if that means taking away, say, a Motel 6 to make way for a four-star hotel. It’s up to state legislatures, not the Supreme Court, to change the law, the decision stated, basically opening the door for people like Bob Ward to take action.

So Ward and Republican Gov. Jodi Rell pushed for a moratorium on eminent domain. The Democratic majority in the legislature blocked them.

Meanwhile, Ward is pushing a bill to repeal the law allowing governments to take away homes for economic development. “If it goes to a vote, it will pass,” Ward said. But he said it may not come up for a vote in a Senate because of opposition from leading Democrats.

Ward urged the two dozen listeners at the library fourm to push their legislators to back the bill. He also called for tightening the law allowing governments to take away property deemed “blighted.” Local governments seeking eminent domain power rely on that law more than on the economic development law. And it’s often a sham, he said: A developer convinces a mayor that a big new development will save a city, then finds an “expert” to declare that a neighborhood is showing signs of eventual decline and blight.

Ward said he does support the use of eminent domain to make way for some public projects like schools or roads. But even then government needs to be kept in check to make sure the seizure is truly necessary. He had the right audience for that message: He spoke after the screening of a preview of a film about the seizure of homes of people in the Hill neighborhood to make way for a massive new K-8 school. The film highlights the plight of several of the 125 low-income people who got kicked out of one of the last areas they could afford in a gentrifying city. It was just the latest episode in a long history of eminent domain abuse in New Haven.

Ward said the law should be changed to ensure that eminent domain is serving a true “public use” and to allow citizens the right to a jury trial to fight any seizure of their property. (Connecticut is one of the few states that require citizens to appear before a judge, who, Ward said, often turns out to be a retired judge acting as a referee.)

Ward further proposed that Connecticut follow the lead of Utah and hire an eminent domain ombudsman to advocate for any citizen contesting eminent domain. Citizens like the Hill neighbors in the film need the ability to wage a fair fight for the property, he said.

“Think of the word you heard [from one woman in the film]: ‘I felt powerless to do anything about it.’ One of the reasons people feel powerless is because the city has lawyers,” Ward said.

The Urban Design League plans a bigger forum on eminent domain, including national figures active on both sides of the issue, at the Shubert Theater on Jan. 21.

Comments

Posted by: Matthew Bigos | November 16, 2005 4:14 PM

Ward's the same idiot that proposed that the state take away state recognition of the Schaghticokes and Eastern/Pawcatuck Pequots... and put our tribes thru the same hideous process the BIA hasfor recognition. He quietly backed out of that one too.
He should move down south where he'll fit in nicely with the IQ of the average repug voter... what is it something like 90?

Posted by: Bill Finch | November 16, 2005 5:26 PM

Rep. Ward is a nice guy to admit his mistake about Mayor DeStefano. It was a silly remark. His position on eminent domain is just about as silly. Cities pay homeowners through the nose for property that would often be hard to sell for public uses we all desperately need (jobs and tax relief). If Rep. Ward wants small towns which he represents to eliminate takings to create jobs and taxes that's ok with me. Cities can't afford that kind of help - let us create our own destiny.

Posted by: Jim Farnam | December 1, 2005 5:46 AM

I think Mark Alan Hughes summed it up for me in the attached article-- the coming together of right wing legal think tanks and progressive forces to remove a critical tool from the city planner's toolbox is an expression of lack of faith in government's capacity to be fair and act in the public's interest. While there have been unfortunate decisions made in some takings for redevelopment, there are many success stories. The answer is to provide better guidelines and protections for the public, not to eliminate the public's ability to act to build badly needed projects and address the rampant failures of the free market in urban areas.

From Mark Alan Hughes, Senior Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and Columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News

Another juicy issue for the right

EMINENT domain will be to 2006-08 as gay marriage was to 2002-04 - an issue stoked to mobilize certain kinds of voters. Eminent domain is the power of government to take private property for public use. Politicians of a certain stripe are betting that eminent domain will turn out voters who feel their hearth and home are threatened by urban renewal no less than by two men having monogamous sex for 30 years within a publicly committed relationship.

The image of government evicting a family from its home was dramatized in the recent Kelo decision in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the power of New London, Conn., to acquire nine houses at fair market value without the consent of the owners in order to pursue an economic development project that everyone agrees will generate increased jobs and taxes.

Since the decision, at least 35 states have proposed legislation limiting or abolishing eminent domain. Pennsylvania's is rumored to be on a fast track, and the U.S. House has passed the Private Property Rights Protection Act. The vote was 376-38, and I'd like to meet the 38 members who could vote against a bill with a name like that.

Frankly, I'd rather defend gay marriage at Vacation Bible School than defend eminent domain under these circumstances. But here goes.

The Kelo decision did not expand the jurisprudence of eminent domain beyond the settled practice of the past 50 years. The court has not spawned some new demon that will devour our homes unless elected officials come riding to our rescue.

Even conservative proponents of judicial restraint and so-called "originalism" (the conservative constitutional theory that the framers' intent should govern us unless we explicitly amend it) acknowledge as much.

For example, Jonathan Adler wrote in National Review: "While the Fifth Amendment clearly requires compensation for takings of any sort, there is little evidence the Founders sought to limit the purposes for which eminent domain could be used."

Exactly. There's nothing more useful than an honest conservative. What is truly being attacked here is not eminent domain but our faith that government is capable of defining a public use.

Eminent domain is our rightful power to declare that public use will trump private use. And because Americans are the world's most fair-minded and generous people, we have written into our very Constitution the protection that the exercise of that rightful power demands the just compensation of the private owners.

And because Americans guard their liberties more dearly than anyone else in the world, we further protect private owners in our state constitutions and laws (Pennsylvania certainly does this) by requiring public participation, a well-defined planning process to determine public use, an appeals process after decisions have been made and that eminent domain be used only as a last resort.

Eminent domain applies only to holdouts who insist their private use should trump the public. For an example, think of the 26 homeowners in Bucks County who delayed construction of an interchange between I-95 and the turnpike for 50 years. The nine owners in Kelo were similar holdouts who sued after dozens of other owners had sold their properties to New London.

No rights are absolute. You can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater, you can't sacrifice infants in free exercise of your religion, and you can't prevent the community from benefiting from a public use for which they are willing to pay you in full.

The use of eminent domain must be well regulated and always demands just compensation. But an assault on eminent domain itself is an assault on our ability to govern ourselves. If we can't define a public purpose, then all government action is illegitimate.

It's just another attack on the idea that government can improve the lives of ordinary people and their communities.

Flame Mark Alan Hughes at mahughes@sas.upenn.edu and enjoy past columns at www.mahughes.org

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