About a month ago, I wrote NIMBY, but yours is fair game, describing a battle going on in Crystal, Minnesota by homeowners trying to stop the city of Crystal from forcing them to sell their 78 homes and several businesses in favor of a redevelopment project of the kind that are becoming notorious in many cities and towns.

I have good news to report: Last Thursday, the Crystal city council voted unanimously to accept a recommendation from their subcommittee to not proceed with the project. The reason given was a "financial gap" because of reduced state aid.

The "financial gap" is a plausible explanation, but it sounded more to me like an excuse to avoid admitting that the council ran up against a buzzsaw citizens group that it couldn't bully or scare into submission. The city council meeting was filled to overflowing, with perhaps 85 residents... there to assure themselves in person what had already been announced... that the project was being called off. For any local city council meeting, that number is extraordinary. Citzens applauded the council vote enthusiastically, but were otherwise politely quiet. In previous meetings, the mayor had called police officers in to intimidate them into silence.

After the meeting was adjourned, I spoke with Brian Edblad and Sherry Miller, who had originally contacted me about the issue, seeking any help they could find. They had found me through PATROL, a small organization and website I set up as a resource for eminent domain abuse cases. With little time before the city would make their decision, writing "NIMBY", alerting members of the Libertarian Party of Minnesota, and offering encouragement were about all I could do to help. "NIMBY" quickly accumulated 1,369 readers and I hope it has alerted all of those readers to the danger that such projects pose to all of us.

Brian, Sherry, and others I met after the meeting were certainly delighted and relieved that the "hammer" is no longer hanging over their head, but they're also now more aware how often and how easily such destructive local government policies can occur. Both intend to help other neighborhoods organize. Not surprisingly, there are several more "redevelopment projects" still hanging in Crystal, as there are in many other cities.

Thanks to great citizen activism, that Crystal Heights issue is dead. Some streets that had been neglected because of the pending action will now be repaired. Crystal Heights is, as never before, a real neighborhood. I suspect the city will not be eager to take that neighborhood on again.

With this battle won, the war continues

I cannot emphasize too strongly that we are all in danger of falling prey to this redevelopment scourge that treats all of us as pieces of property to be bought and sold on someone's whim or someone's promise of increased revenue. If you value your right to control your own life... if you value your home... if you value our right to private property, I encourage you to read "Public Power, Private Gain"  from the Castle Coalition, part of the libertarian Institute for Justice... one of the few organizations helping citizens to fight eminent domain abuse.

From the Forward of that report:

"Government is instituted to protect property of every sort", wrote Madison, and for this reason, "that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own." This precept of justice was embodied in the Fifth Amendment's protection of private property, where by constitutional text, property can be taken only for public use and upon the payment of just compensation. For reasons that are more regrettable than rational, the courts have greatly relaxed the public use requirement. Inevitably, this invites the taking or eminent domain power to be misused, either by inefficient or corrupt application or both.

The extent of this abuse is widespread, but until recently, largely unaddressed, in part because isolated landowners confronted with costly and cumbersome condemnation procedures seldom have the legal or political wherewithal to stand against the winds of power. The public advocacy and litigation defense of the Institute for Justice is changing this by standing with landowners singled out for disfavor. Whether family, farmer, or small merchant, these owners wish only for what Madison said our Constitution guarantees - the protection of property.

This comprehensive report, prepared by the Institute for Justice and senior attorney Dana Berliner, carefully catalogues the extent of the problem of eminent domain abuse. It illustrates how municipal good intention, often for urban redevelopment or economic promise, can be unfairly built upon the rightful ownership of others. When projects are carried out heavy-handedly and unnecessarily, not through voluntary transaction, but coercion, the protection of property is eroded and our bedrock freedom to decide upon our own course is worn away.

Douglas W W. K Kmiec
Dean & St. Thomas More Professor of Law,
The Catholic University of America; senior policy fellow,
Pepperdine University

You may think that protection from our own government should be unnecessary, but the simple, disturbing fact is that we are in far more danger from our own governments than from burglars, thieves, terrorists, radical tyrants, nature, and all the other forces you may worry about. As I've said repeatedly, we must demand that government be forced to return to the role of protecting us, not abusing and enslaving us.