“The specter of condemnation hangs over all property. Nothing is to prevent the State from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory."  —  Justice Sandra Day O’Connor

        WE are not always the first to cover a story. While some feel this anniversary is old news, it's worth revisiting. Here in Whatcom County eminent domain per se does not occur often. What's clearly underway is a slower, deeper, and more insidious form of public theft, but in another form -- uncompensated regulatory takings meant to whittle (and sometimes cruelly jerk) away the use of private land for any cause. Kelo still matters; the core lesson is the same. Cozy relationships exist between council, cities, planners, outsider enviro-control interests, and parasitic institutions like the Land Trust. These are working to systematically deal away rural and ag land use through new "planning tools" like mandatory TDR trades (transfers of development rights) to favor urban growth areas above other land use. As cities grow, rural areas will be made increasingly locked down and useless over time. Conniving developers who are involved: shame.  WE will report more on that.  But for now, know that

Government Celebrates Ten Years of Stealing Private Land
The News Talkers, June 23, 2015

Today is the tenth anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in the case of Suzette Kelo and the Fort Trumbull neighborhood. The Supreme Court of the United States found that the government has the right to take private property for the purpose of turning it over to private developers. A stunning admission by a state Supreme Court judge emphasizes the fact that this is one case which must be overturned.

A journalist, who wrote a book about the Kelo case gave a keynote address at a private dinner in 2011, in which he talked about Suzette Kelo’s personal story. In a most astounding statement, one of the state Supreme Court judges, Richard N. Palmer, approached Suzette Kelo and the journalist, Jeff Benedict, after the address, and said, “Had I known all of what you just told us, I would have voted differently.”

Suzette and the journalist were speechless because his vote would have changed history. The Justice “turned to Suzette, took her hand and offered a heartfelt apology. Tears trickled down her red cheeks. It was the first time in the 12-year saga that anyone had uttered the words ‘I’m sorry.’ It was all she could do to whisper the words: ‘Thank you.’”

Developers are almost always tied to a political party which makes this decision a political and unsavory one.

Over the years, Eminent Domain has gone from being used solely for public use to use by the public for private development, including privately owned shopping centers, conference centers, resorts, auto malls, movie theaters, and so on. A developer who curries favor can claim public use for land that would normally be sold privately.

The case of Kelo v. New London on June 23, 2004 (Kelo v. New London 2004) was the deciding case.

The state decided to take Suzette Kelo’s beautiful waterview home, nicknamed The Little Pink House, and her neighbors’ homes, for use as a resort hotel and conference center, a park, and 80-100 new residence with office space.

The City eventually agreed to move Susette Kelo’s house to a new location and agreed to pay substantial additional compensation to other homeowners, something they were not willing to do originally.

This was an entire neighborhood they were willing to destroy, a long-privately-held community, and they did.

As it turned out, ten years later, it’s still an undeveloped, bulldozed area. All projects have fallen through. It cost the city $78 million to destroy the homes and prepare it for development.

The original redeveloper was unable to obtain financing and abandoned the redevelopment project, leaving the land an empty lot. It was eventually turned into a dump by the City.

Jeff Benedict, Hartford Courant journalist, has written a book about Suzette Kelo’s story called The Little Pink House.

It’s an American tragedy of stolen land that is playing out all over this country. It’s being abused in state after state, with New York the worst offender.

The Daily Signal had a story about it today and interviewed some of the victims of this government overreach.

“They put in infrastructure and roads to nowhere, sidewalks to nowhere with always the thought that they were going to have this redevelopment plan where a hotel would come, a health club, cafes, restaurants and stuff like that that never came to be,” Kelo told The Daily Signal.

And for Kelo and Michael Cristofaro—who grew up in the Fort Trumbull neighborhood and whose father was one of the plaintiffs in the case—the wounds from their battle with New London haven’t yet healed.

“If you look out, this is what the city of New London wanted,” Cristofaro told The Daily Signal, standing in the Fort Trumbull neighborhood. “This is what they took our homes for—this vast amount of land. This is what the U.S. Supreme Court said that the city of New London was justified in taking our homes—an empty field. As far as I’m concerned, it’s an empty dream.”

     The way things work up here in the northwest corner of the Left Coast, it's probably just a matter of time before this Brave New World intrusion concept washes up onto the shores of Bellingham Bay, like so much other intellectual flotsam has.  Watch your can, man.

   Here's to PLF's fight against Seattle's mad-hatter unwarranted surveillance.

Look closer at the law. Lurking beneath its seemingly benevolent surface is a mandate that threatens the privacy rights of each and every person who lives in Seattle.

The regulation directs city garbage collectors to search your garbage cans in order to determine whether you garbage can contains 10% or more recyclable or compostable materials. If it does, you’ll be subject to fines and/or a brightly colored shame tag pasted on your garbage bin—a scarlet letter to proclaim your crimes to your friends, neighbors, and passers-by.

While the city tries to paint a happy face on its program, internal training documents obtained calls for “zero tolerance” war on privacy. Lest there be any doubt that the city wants its garbage collectors to search through garbage cans, the training materials show garbage collectors removing bags to inspect a garbage can, peering into the contents of translucent bags, and opening torn or untied bags. Somewhat laughably, the training materials claim that calculating the 10% compostable materials threshold should be easy. After all, shouldn’t every garbage collector be able to determine on the fly whether the amount of food waste in any given bin is equal to or greater than 10% of its gross volume (x > πr2h ÷ 10)? Despite the math, it appears that Seattle garbage collectors are on pace to issue upwards of 100,000 citations this year.

The invasiveness and coerciveness of Seattle’s garbage snooping, standing alone, is objectionable.  But worse still is the fact that the regulation deprives Seattle residents of a constitutionally protected right. Washington State recognizes that privacy, like property, is a fundamental right. In fact, Washington constitutional article I, section 7, goes much farther than the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, providing that “[n]o person shall be disturbed in his private affairs, or his home invaded, without authority of law.”

Washington courts “jealously guard” the right to privacy, and have long-held that individuals have a reasonable expectation that the contents of their garbage cans will remain private. In the case, State v. Boland, the police and prosecuting attorney’s office received anonymous letters alleging that Boland was illegally selling prescription drugs out of his home. After an attempt to purchase drugs from Boland failed, the police searched his garbage cans without a warrant, uncovering evidence of drug-related activities. On review, Washington’s Supreme Court held that the government’s examination of the contents of a garbage can was an unconstitutional intrusion into a person’s private affairs. Particularly noteworthy, the court explained that “While a person must reasonably expect a licensed trash collector will remove the contents of his trash can, this expectation does not also infer an expectation of governmental intrusion.”

It is unclear why Seattle has chosen to do exactly what Washington’s constitution outright prohibits. It’s not like Seattle doesn’t recognize the vital importance of privacy—one week after adopting its garbage snooping law, the city announced its intention to be at the cutting edge of privacy protection by adopting a code of “privacy principles” when dealing with the data it collects from its residents—principles that are incongruous with its garbage inspection law. It would be funny, if the city wasn’t so sadly tin-eared to its citizen’s right to privacy.

The city’s inconsistency is whiplash inducing. Not only does the garbage inspection law authorize a massive and repeated intrusion into the private affairs of Seattle’s citizens, it also operates solely on the word of garbage collectors. With one exception for repeat commercial offenders, the city code doesn’t require any preservation of evidence (such as photographs) and doesn’t provide any opportunity for appeal. The garbage man is the proverbial judge, jury, and executioner—and snoop.

While composting and recycling are laudable goals, we should not allow our government to run so ridiculously roughshod over our rights. Nor should we allow our government to treat us with less respect than is due to criminals—most of us are everyday homeowners and business owners, not suspects.

_____

Brian T. Hodges is the managing attorney of PLF’s Northwest center. He is a strong proponent of individual and property rights and actively litigates in the areas of regulatory takings, due process, land use, water law, environmental law, growth management, Indian law, and administrative law.

View all posts by Brian T. Hodges

     Our pals at the Environmental Protection Agency who are deviling Whatcom County farmers at an ever-increasing pace deserve a new moniker: Environmental Pollution Agency.

   Five days after the EPA had their little oops moment, releasing toxic chemicals into a 126 mile river which is a tributary of the San Juan River and the Colorado River System, news agency CNN described it's utter frustration in this news report, Pollution Is Flowing Faster Than Facts:   "The mustard hue of the Animas River in Colorado -- the most visible effect of a mistake by the Environmental Protection Agency that dumped millions of gallons of pollutants into the water -- is striking.

Just a glance at a photo of the orange-yellowish slush is enough to know that something seems wrong. Scientists will have to say just how wrong, and possibly dangerous, the contamination is, though five days after the spill answers are few.

Just how polluted is the river? Is drinking water in peril? Are businesses dependent on the river out of luck?

One question that has been answered is the size of the spill: more than triple than originally estimated. The U.S. Geological Survey reported the size of the spill to be more than 3 million gallons, compared with the initial EPA estimate of 1 million gallons." ...more

Sooo .... just two days after that revelation, EPA began to claim that the river is “restoring itself."  So said the country’s top environmental official on Thursday. And she added that deep-pockets-EPA is coughing-up an absurdly low $500,000 to help the locals.  WE couldn't make this up - see the video of this statement yourself below.

Yes indeed. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy told reporters that the water quality has returned to “pre-incident conditions” after toxic sludge from an abandoned gold mine upstream in southern Colorado flowed into it. “The very good news is that we see that this river is restoring itself.”

Her agency has taken full responsibility for the spill, in which more than three million gallons of toxic wastewater spewed out of the Gold King Mine near Silverton, Colorado, while an EPA crew was cleaning it up.

On Wednesday, Colorado officials said it was safe for Durango — the town just downstream from the spill site — to pull drinking water from the river again. [NBC video and story]...

Click on the picture above, see and hear the statement yourself.  WE couldn't make up such a thing.  WE do wonder what brand of brownies our pals at the Environmental Protection Agency might be snacking on in Colorado, to hallucinate so.