There was strong public opposition in Virginia and elsewhere to the U.S. Supreme Court’s infamous 2005 Kelo decision allowing the government to seize private property — so-called “takings” — for other than purely public uses. Even so, it took the Virginia General Assembly two years to pass a bill limiting the use of eminent domain. This came after 35 other states had previously acted. But the new law is still not tough enough.
By allowing private takings only for traditional “public uses” such as schools and parks, and defining “blight” in much narrower terms, the new law is definitely an improvement in a state in which property has been confiscated in recent years to make way for a private parking lot, a neighbor’s driveway, a condo development and a shopping center.
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But it still doesn’t guarantee that property rights will be protected from such abuses in the future. “When eminent domain fades from the national spotlight … the condemner’s lobby will once again slip into the halls of the Assembly and continue slowly chipping away at any protections owners gain today,” wrote Jeremy P. Hopkins in “The Real Story of Eminent Domain in Virginia,” published by the Virginia Institute for Public Policy.
And it wasn’t a coincidence, Roanoke attorney David Nixon maintains, that the legislation passed only after two Republican state senators he accused of a conflict of interest voluntarily abstained from voting on it.
Sen. Thomas Norment, R-James City, and Sen. Ken Stolle, R-Virginia Beach, are “rainmakers” for a Hampton Roads law firm that represents many government and utility condemners. During a secret meeting last month, a Senate Ethics Advisory Panel unanimously cleared the duo in a one-sentence ruling. But, two former senators on the panel, Wiley Mitchell of Norfolk and Robert Calhoun of Alexandria, had contributed to the political campaigns of the two men they exonerated. Both Mitchell and Calhoun are lawyer-lobbyists for large, quasi-governmental authorities that currently exercise eminent domain powers.
Virginia still needs a constitutional amendment (one was defeated during the last session) to protect property owners from future abuses of eminent domain. Such an amendment needs to spell out precisely what “just compensation” means for people whose property is taken without their consent, including the market value of the land and buildings and all the other economic losses incurred when somebody is forced to move.
The eminent domain problem is not limited to the Old Dominion. Neither Maryland nor the District of Columbia protect or adequately compensate private property owners. Until they do, nobody’s home or business is safe from local governments’ wrecking balls.
