Bill gives cities carte blanche ‘takings’ power

Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2021 signed a law that returns property to the heirs of a family victimized by Manhattan Beach, which used the power of eminent domain to take the couple’s oceanfront resort for transparently racist reasons. Senate Bill 746 not only restored, albeit belatedly, a modicum of justice — but reminded us what happens when government has too much power to take private property.

Unfortunately, the Legislature might not have learned the requisite lesson, as it is considering a bill that would increase the number of unjust property takings.

Governments have the power of eminent domain but, under the limitations embedded in the Constitution, are supposed to limit those takings to public projects and pay fair-market compensation. Governments traditionally used this power to build freeways and rail lines that require the acquisition of long slivers of land.

As is typical with government, officials have continually pushed the envelope. In the late 1940s, California created a system of redevelopment agencies that used eminent domain for urban renewal. Those agencies eventually began directing myriad tax-generating development projects under redevelopment’s guise, and wantonly used their eminent-domain powers to acquire homes and businesses and hand them over on the cheap to developers.

The process wasn’t confined to California. In 2005’s Kelo decision, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the city of New London, Conn., to take non-blighted property to promote an economic-development project. In her dissent, then-Justice Sandra Day O’Connor argued correctly that the government now “has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more.”

California’s redevelopment agencies caused myriad problems. By transferring development decisions to municipal planners, they distorted local development decisions and ran up taxpayer-backed debt. They exacerbated the state’s housing crisis by discouraging cities from permitting housing developments and encouraging them to subsidize big-box stores and other projects that resulted in a local tax windfall.

In 2011, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law eliminating those agencies because of the drain they imposed on the state budget, which was required to backfill tax revenues the agencies diverted from public schools and traditional services. Yet municipal planners and crony capitalists have continued to push for its return. Most recently, Assembly member David Alvarez, D-Chula Vista, introduced a bill to revive these agencies — despite their terrible legacy.

Assembly Bill 1476 would not only recreate the entire redevelopment structure, but it would explicitly allow the use of eminent domain for “transit priority projects” and “projects that implement a sustainable communities strategy.” Once again, cities and counties would have carte blanche to take private property and hand it over to politically powerful developers.

Lower- and middle-income people will suffer the most. So will minority communities. “In 24 years, 2,532 projects were carried out in 992 cities that displaced one million people, two-thirds of them African American,” according to a study published by the Institute for Justice. California’s Commission on Reparations points to the ill effects of eminent-domain abuse on California’s Black population.

Why would California want to revive agencies that destroyed property rights? This legislation will be heard in the Assembly Committee on Local Government on Wednesday at 1:30 p.m. We encourage concerned citizens to make their voices heard.