ACT NOW TO DEFEND YOUR PROPERTY RIGHTS!

Two eminent domain bills are before the Alabama Legislature.

BE SURE YOUR ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES KNOW WHERE YOU STAND!

Call 334-242-7800 to speak to your senator and 334-242-7600 to speak to your representative.

SB368 SPONSORED BY SEN. STEVE FRENCH PROVIDES STRONG PROTECTION (IT WILL BE INTRODUCED IN THE HOUSE BY REP. GERALD ALLEN).

What it does:

1. Prevents private property from being taken from one owner and given or sold to another for private retail, office, industrial , commercial, or residential use

2. Clearly defines public use to exclude the public benefits of economic development such as revenue enhancement and job creation currently allowed by the Alabama Code (sections 24-2-1 and 24-2-3, for example)

3. Protects private property that is not blighted from being taken on the basis of bogus blight definitions

4. Ensures fair treatment of property owners when eminent domain is exercised:

· Requires that compensation for property taken be based on highest and best use

· Requires that relocation costs and closing costs on replacement property are reimbursed

· Requires 3 appraisals in establishing property value

· Allows state income tax resulting from an involuntary sale to be deferred

5. Puts these protections in the Constitution so they cannot be changed without a vote of the people.

SB446 / HB622, SPONSORED BY SEN. PREUITT AND REP. MARCEL BLACK CREATES AN ILLUSION OF PROTECTION THAT DOES MORE HARM THAN GOOD.

What it does:

1. Specifies that private use cannot be made of property taken for public use unless it is sold to a person or entity that does not have the power of eminent domain. (This allows private use by Walmart if they buy it but not if they lease it.)

2. Private property can only be taken for or in connection with an “actual public use” which must be “particularly stated and specifed” in the judicial proceedings. (The problem is that the legislature has declared private enterprise to be “public use” when part of a redevelopment project. This needs to be prohibited, not just “stated and specified”. Furthermore, a hotel next to a civic center would be “in connection with” an actual public use.)

3. A government entity cannot decide to change the use of property that has been used for a public use or dispose of the property within 15 years without giving the former owner from which it was taken the opportunity to reacquire it. (By the time government has taken your business and built a courthouse on your property, and you have relocated, what danger is there that you could buy it back with the courthouse on it? If the former owner does not buy it, it can be sold or even given to a favored private entity. There is no requirement to offer it at public sale. No such limitation is placed on nongovernmental entities such as utilities, so they may change uses or dispose of property without giving former owners opportunity to reacquire it. Property that is taken for public use but never used does not fall under this provision - it can be sold to anyone at any time.)

4. Public use shall not encompass “mere incidental benefit to the public”. (Would a massive redevelopment project that greatly enhances tax revenue, or a large economic development project be “mere incidental benefit”? What if tax revenue and jobs were the main purpose of the project? Is it then “public use”?)

5. Eminent domain cannot be exercised to take property within a blighted area that is not itself blighted. (The extremely broad and subjective definitions of blight in the AL Code allow almost any property to be considered “blighted”).

6. Property cannot be taken solely on the basis of blight without a court declaration, notice to the owner, a time period for correction of the problem(s), a failure of the owner to correct, and a reasonable anticipation of a specified public use after acquisition. (This is a good provision)

7. This amendment or sections 23 and 235 of the AL Constitution cannot be amended by an amendment that affects or applies to less than all the state.

8. Allows the legislature to perpetuate the current status quo by delegating its authority to exercise the power of eminent domain to private corporations and individuals for the uses which it has previously allowed by legislation. Also allows private property to be taken for private use if part of a redevelopment plan or urban renewal plan that is approved by the time the amendment is passed or by other proposed dates, and perpetuates the massive power of airport authorities to take property for all kinds of private uses.

9. Has such ambiguous and convoluted language that its true effect will not be known until the courts rule.

10. Puts all these exemptions and loopholes in the Constitution, effectively weakening the Constitutional protection that we now have in Section 23 which reads, “…nor shall private property be taken for private use, or for the use of corporations, other than municipal, without the consent of the owner…”.