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October 31, 2006

Dave Johnson is Full of Pig Shit

Color me shocked. The Huffington Post today has one of the most inane, inaccurate, Henny-Penny the-sky-is-falling entries that I have ever seen in the non-wacky blogosphere (thank you, Don Rumsfeld, for adding that delightful phrase to my lexicon). Dave Johnson is warning voters that eminent domain ballot measures in four states (California, Washington, Idaho and Arizona) will require taxpayers to pay people not to put pig farms next to their homes – and he is NOT kidding!

There is a law on the ballot in four states that says if I want to open a hog farm or a chemical plant next door to your house and you don't want me to do that, then YOU have to PAY ME not to -- you have to pay me ALL THE MONEY I MIGHT HAVE MADE.

I am not kidding. This new law says that if you want to stop a corporation from dumping toxic waste into the river from which you get your drinking water, or stop them from venting dangerous chemicals into the air, then YOU have to PAY that company not to. I am NOT kidding!

The far right says that a government stopping a company from dumping waste into a river is "taking" money from that company. I am not kidding. And you had better take this seriously or YOU will be PAYING companies to not harm you and your families.

Big sigh. Did he ever actually READ the measures? SERIOUSLY.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about California's Prop. 90, which I had initially believed was an Oregon Measure 37 on steroids, based on the radical scaremongering reporting I had read. But when I actually READ the measure, I found it wasn't like that at all. Here are a few excerpts from my previous post, and I would again ask anyone to PROVE ME WRONG (I really like this all-caps feature. WOW, it's so EXCITING).

[The language of the measure] provides an exemption for public health and safety, it seems very unlikely to me that the California Courts will determine that environmental protections (which fall under "health and safety" umbrella) or zoning restrictions (ditto) are in some way a taking for a private use in violation of the measure's clear eminent domain context. It seems to me Prop. 90 actually offers quite a bit less protection for private property owners than Measure 37...

It's the old "They'll put a pig farm next to your home" scare tactic, which is utterly ridiculous as no sane property owner would waste perfectly good residential real estate by building a pig farm on it - and he certainly wouldn't be successful in claiming that being prevented from doing so somehow reduced the value of his land.

Which brings me to another false accusation about this measure - that the State would have to compensate private property owners for all the lost money they could have made if they had fully developed their land to its highest and best use. It is simply not true. The measure doesn't say that and no state has ever compensated people that way. In Oregon, property owners are paid compensation for their property based on its value absent the regulation that restricts future development. In other words, if you lifted the restriction and then sold the property "as is," its fair market value would be the amount of compensation. In California, if Prop. 90 passed it would be even more simple. If eminent domain is used to take any portion of your property or damage its value in any way, then – and only then - you must be fairly compensated for your actual loss. Oh, and by the way, your property can't be taken from you and used for a non-public purpose.

If I'm wrong on this, give me a sound LEGAL argument as to why I'm wrong, not a terrified and irrational answer based on some anti-property rights group's WILD INTERPRETATION of the measure. And to Dave Johnson, please, have a drink, catch your breath, read the measures, and look at it from a rational, legal perspective. You may not like tying the hands of planners who want to impose utopia on the rest of us, property rights be damned - and that's fine, if that's how you feel. Make a RATIONAL argument for your position. Otherwise, SHUT UP with the freaking pig farm argument. It is SO STUPID.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, the answer is YES, I am feeling particularly GRUMPY today. So what.

Posted by Becky at October 31, 2006 09:42 AM