Eminent domain limits amendment passed in SC. What am I missing?

[raccoon]

“this amendment prohibits the State or a local government from condemning, or taking, private property for any purpose except for a public use, and says that economic development in itself is not a public use…”

I understand some other states passed similar legislation.

I'm surprised this is even on the ballot. The people who would most likely be affected, it seems to me, are those on the lower end of the income spectrum. Not the movers and shakers.

What am I missing here?

[izzie]

1. I do not think you are missing anything. I think we all thought

this is what the constitution always said but the highest court has just said no. I think Maine has some thing like this on the books already. And I think NH also had it on this year. Every one just wants to be sure it is understood that some money bags can not take your home to put up a Wal-mart because the town would get more tax but if the town needed a road it could take your home.

[lcordero2]

3. the problem is that they aren't going to get more tax

these businesses get tax breaks out the ying yang and the tax burden is pushed down to the people that can't afford them. These businesses are a pox because not only do they NOT pay taxes, they are a drain on public resources since the municipality has to hire more cops and firemen.

[endarkenment]

5. Right. I voted for the NH version.

Emminent Domain is appropriate for public use, not for taking my shit and giving it to you.

[izzie]

6. I recall this fight from my childhood.

I grew up next to a Maine light house and some rich guy was always wanting the land. My father used to say we will be taxes off this land so some big business could get it for a hotel. The tax really got high but my father hung in until he died. He liked living at that spot. So this law and the land we grew up with was always with us. I am sure if the rich people who wanted the land got it the town would have gone up on the tax even more. If a corp. hotel had it I am willing to bet a deal would have been cut. It was different than land my Uncle lost every few years for a super highway out of Boston. That just made a road wide and he got a flat fee for the land.

[lcordero2]

2. the people that would be benefitted

1. people in the lower part of the income spectrum since we usually rent and being displaced means a bigger rent bill.
2. middle class that own property since the govt is going to "buy" the property at a price that the govt deems "reasonable". Which means that the property owner is going to take it in the rectum with no lube.

[Lexingtonian]

4. i'd guess

that the Kelo decision, given a reality of corrupt or easily corrupted local government especially in rural Red States, in the present probably swung power too much. This sort of amendment perhaps pushes things too far the other way- poor landholders sell anyway, as a reality, so the unreasonable resisters tend to be relatively wealthy and their essential intent tends to be to drive up the 'fair market value'.

In short, this probably does nothing much to help poor people who happen do to have desirable land, but it helps wealthy landholders drive the price up. This is also a setup for Dennis Hastert type of land deals, a very old game in local town and municipal government and the families who run them.

That game is you find out, via inside connections, about what buildings the government wants to buy or what land it wants to build a freeway over. Usually the government planners are humane and propose to buy pretty worthless land the owners are glad to sell or teardown buildings, so they tend to be cheap. You quickly buy them first for a song. Then you charge, uh, a significant markup when the highway people contact you. They know what you're doing, of course, from looking at the property sale record. But bureaucratic inertia is great and a lot of plans and promises have to be revised if they decide to put the highway or offices any other place. Not to mention the cost of the delay in time. But they can't prove that you got inside info and acted on it deliberately, and generally it isn't even strictly illegal. Then you get a buddy to 'reassess' the property at some ludicrously high value and squeeze them some more.