Texans overwhelmingly voted for Proposition 11 in hopes that it sends a strong message that Texans want eminent domain reform. However, Prop 11 didn't get the job done. The Texas Legislature needs to continue the push for further reforms and to prevent abuses. TURF didn't support Prop 11 because it still allows a governmental entity to take Texans' private property for "urban blight" and "certain economic development or enhancement of tax revenue purposes," nor did it include:
- Strong definition of public use limiting eminent domain for ANY economic development and tax enhancement purposes
- Good faith negotiations (prevent entities from low-balling landowners and forcing them to hire expensive lawyers to get fair market value)
- Compensation for diminished access to a landowner's property
- Limit the granting of eminent domain to any further entities without a vote of the people
- Relocation assistance for displaced landowners
- Ability to buy land back at original cost after 10 years if the State doesn't use it
Bottom line, the State can still condemn Texans' land against their will and hand it over to private developers for toll roads using public private partnerships called Comprehensive Development Agreements. The Trans Texas Corridor, originally slated to gobble-up massive swaths of private property (4 football fields wide, biggest land grab in Texas history) through rural Texas, along with dozens of toll projects in urban areas are precisely why Texans have yet to get a strong eminent domain reform bill. When foreign corporations get controlling interest in public highways in such sweetheart deals with guaranteed 12-19% annual profits, non-compete agreements that guarantee congestion on the free routes, etc., they become defacto taxing entities and charge Texans hefty tolls to access their own public roads.
It's private profits in the name of public use.
Comments
Texas is physically the biggest state in the Continental U.S. by far. The state is adding to its population at the rate of 1,000 a DAY. Traffic congestion is bringing highways to a standstill, the gas tax comes nowhere close to covering the maintenance needs of existing roads and soon you will have freighters from China parked along the Gulf Coast after passing through the Panama canal with NO PLACE to send their goods except back home. If the anti-tax, anti-development, anti-foreigner groups from the left and the right that your column caters to have their way with eminent domain reform, you can kiss the state's long-term prosperity goodbye.
prop 11 says explicitly that the politically connected own you and your property at what ever price they see fit. the US supreme court will back them up if necessary
As I learned in other cities, according to "urban blight" laws around the country, once land has been declared "blighted," the government can come and take it for "development," at any time - and there is NO process to "unblight" the land. Even if you build an office building, the .gov can still take the land and give it to developers, because the assumption in the law is that ONLY THE GOVERNMENT CAN FIX URBAN BLIGHT.
ESeizure of proivate land for anything other than public use should be illegal. The only thing worse than that corruption is the state's participation in Toll Road projects to the profit of private companies.
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