Joshua Rosenau spends his days defending the teaching of evolution at 
The (valid) concern over the eminent domain ruling in Kelo v. New London has been misappropriated for some truly awful purposes. Activists in several western states are using it to push the idea that regulations are "takings," and are trying to block environmental regulation (or bankrupt states). As John Echeverria, executive director of the Georgetown Environmental Law and Policy Institute, told the Post, "The agenda behind these initiatives is to make it so expensive for local and state governments to regulate land use that they can hardly function at all."
The underlying idea is based on the writings of Richard Epstein. Epstein argues that any time the government takes something from a citizen, through taxation or regulation, the government ought to give something of equal value to that citizen. It's an attack on any sort of redistributive taxation, but most dangerously an assault on a wide range of regulation, including regulations on the environment and worker safety.
When the government restricts what sort of building you construct, Epstein would argue that it is taking something from you, and ought to compensate you for that taking. A conservative activist is bankrolling the effort to enshrine that bizarre notion in state laws. Where the idea was attempted, the state of Oregon has had to abandon enforcement of environmental laws to prevent bankrupting the state.
The problem with the logic is that rules which limit development don't just affect the land-owner, they also affect the community as a whole. Having a greenbelt around a city makes everyone in the city better off. Decisions that affect only one person are not the proper place for government regulation. When one person's decisions affect society at large, that's where government ought to get involved. The costs of harming the public are aggregated through fees, taxes and fines.
These costs are easily seen in the plight of people in Abdjan, Ivory Coast. The New York Times reports how inadequate regulations on the disposal of hazardous waste led to waste being dumped in backyards, at great cost to the people.
Treating the waste properly would have cost thousands of dollars more. In a sense then, any regulation requiring adequate treatment of it would be a "taking," but how many people would dispute the benefits of those regulations.
Comments
This has been going on since long before Kelo, but that decision seems to have become a hook for lots of crazies to hang their hats on (as opposed, say, to the decision back in the early 90s to take a bunch of private land to build parking lots for the Texas Rangers).
What's odd about this notion of "takings" is that there's never a corresponding notion of "givings" -- the increases in wealth that, as you point out, result from government action regulating land use or other matters. If you look at real estate records, you quickly see how better it is to own land with access to roads, potable water, or land at a distance from noxious uses. Check out the difference in insurance costs for homes in otherwise-equivalent areas, one benefitting from effective local fire and police departments, the other not. Or consider how much more people pay to buy a house in a "good" school district.
Obviously if a jurisdiction has to compensate people fully for its takings, it should be able to recapture the value of its givings. Oh, wait, that would be socialism.
Posted by: paul | October 2, 2006 11:21 AM
I've fantasized about buying land next door to the people who are responsible for the Oregon measure, and building a feedlot or a landfill.
I wish there was more recognition that the government protects your property values through regulating what kinds of obnoxious things your neightbors do to their land, and doesn't just reduce your property values by keeping you from doing obnoxious things.
Posted by: Andrew | October 2, 2006 4:19 PM
Okay, fair enough, let the government pay for the loss of profit to the property owner. Then, to maintain fairness, make the property owner pay whatever costs may be involved in accomodating additional traffic, decrease in property value of adjacent properties, additional sewage treatment capacity, loss of value to community of ecosystem services that may be disrupted, additions to police force, etc., etc.
Posted by: mark | October 3, 2006 12:40 PM
I know this is an old post, but...
There needs to be a concerted effort to counter the idea that taxes are bad. This message has become so pervasive in our society that it isn't even questioned any longer.
Instead, we need to show the benefits that government provides. We need to start showing what you get for your tax money.
Further, we need to remind people that while we can see waste in government spending because the spending is supposed to be public, we have no idea how much waste there is in corporate spending. So saying that we would reduce wasteful spending by letting the corporations handle government tasks is comparing a known level of waste with an unknown level of waste, but we assume its lower. It's comparing apples to a mythical fruit and saying the mythical fruit must be better. Silly really.
Ciao,
-Flex
Posted by: Flex | October 6, 2006 7:53 AM