ShareThisBy JOHN HILL
Friday, November 10, 2006
California and several other states that considered changes to private property rights delivered a mixed verdict Tuesday.
While voters in 9 of 12 states approved measures to limit government use of eminent domain, California and two others rejected more ambitious proposals to compensate landowners when rules and regulations reduce property values.
Still, backers of California's Proposition 90 said the vote showed that such a measure could pass, and vowed to gather signatures to put it on the ballot in 2008.
"The bottom line is we're going to be back better funded and stronger than before," said Kevin Spillane, a Proposition 90 campaign consultant.
Opponents said they would try to defuse such a move by getting the Legislature to address eminent domain changes, minus Proposition 90's requirement that landowners be compensated when any regulation or law impinges on property values.
"We think the Legislature is the place where this debate should occur," said Chris McKenzie, executive director of the League of California Cities.
Proposition 90 was narrowly defeated Tuesday, with 47.5 percent of voters in favor and 52.5 percent opposed. The measure would have prohibited governments from using the power of eminent domain to take property for use by a private developer.
And it would have required governments to compensate property owners when regulations and laws resulted in "substantial" economic losses. Opponents said this provision would have applied to everything from environmental rules to workplace protections.
Nine states passed so-called "property rights" measures, most of them barring governments from handing over property that they condemn to private developers. The states were motivated by a U.S. Supreme Court decision, Kelo v. New London, that allowed a Connecticut city to condemn homes as part of a neighborhood revitalization project.
One of those states, Arizona, passed a law that went beyond eminent domain to also require property owners to be compensated if certain land use laws reduced property values.
But two other states besides California, Washington and Idaho, rejected measures that addressed the issue of "regulatory takings."
"Last night's election represented a massive landslide for property rights...," said Timothy Sandefur, an attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation. "What you see is a tremendous message being sent to bureaucrats throughout the country."
The foundation, which describes its mission as "defending liberty from the grasp of power," did not take an official position on Proposition 90, but has done extensive research on eminent domain.
Sandefur conceded that measures that called for compensation when laws reduce property values fared less well.
"The issue of eminent domain has really fixated the American people," he said. "But the issue of regulatory takings has not been brought home to them in the same way."
Even though Proposition 90 failed, however, consultant Spillane called the close vote "remarkable," especially considering that opponents outspent backers three- to-one. The result will allow wealthy New York libertarian Howie Rich, who backed the California measure, to raise more money for the next effort, Spillane said.
He said that next time around, the language of the initiative can be "massaged and refined" to clarify that it will not apply to the wide range of circumstances suggested by opponents.
Opponents hope it never gets to that point, and that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature will take the momentum away from any new measure by addressing it on their own.
