In June, U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter sided with the 5-4 majority in the pernicious "Kelo" decision, which held that the foundering city of New London, Conn., could seize well-kept-up private homes and turn those properties over to private, third-party developers based on the developers' promises to pay more taxes.
Outraged champions of property rights decided to follow precisely Justice Souter's own logic. They collected the signatures needed to place on the agenda of the March 14 Weare, N.H., town meeting a proposal that the municipality seize and demolish a 200-year-old farmhouse owned by Justice Souter to turn the property into a tax-generating Lost Liberty Hotel.
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At the February town meeting, however, the article was amended by residents so that on March 14 Weare residents merely voted to approve an advisory measure condemning the use of eminent domain for private-property transfers.
Following Tuesday's vote, the Union Leader of Manchester, N.H., editorialized: "The good folks in Weare knew better than to right one wrong with another."
"On Tuesday Weare voters ... approved a ballot measure directing the town not to take Souter's home, but to urge lawmakers to bar government from taking private property for the purpose of economic development or for another's private use.
"Good timing. Next week legislators get to vote on just such an amendment. CACR 30 would add this sentence to the state constitution: Eminent domain shall not be used to transfer ownership of real property for private use or economic development. It is a needed amendment."
If backers can gather 83,157 signatures this spring, Nevadans will get to vote on their own eminent domain reform, the People's Initiative to Stop the Taking of Our Land.
In a day when 350 residents can turn out at a Las Vegas City Council meeting (as they did Wednesday) to protest an expansion of the downtown redevelopment district, based on this city's own shameful history of seizing private property and turning it over to foundering private "redevelopment" schemes, such a reform is needed here, too.
