California Cities Want More Eminent Domain Power
by Timothy Sandefur
The Sacramento Bee's Dan Walters explains how California's legislators are already trying to repeal what few eminent domain reforms were passed recently, and make it easier for the government to take away your home or business and give it to wealthy private developers.
Legislative language being circulated in the Capitol would allow older redevelopment projects to be extended and would loosen the standards for declaring blight. This, in effect, would reopen the door to the kind of wheeling and dealing that had generated demands for reform in the first place.
This may be very arcane, unsexy policy stuff, but the financial consequences for state and local governments and private landowners and developers seeking redevelopment subsidies are immense, easily reaching into the tens of billions of dollars.