“New York Appellate Court Approves Eminent Domain
to Save Farmland”
- News Brief, PRFA, January 2008
“The Federal Government is Establishing Power
Line Corridors in New York”
-News Brief, PRFA, October 2007
“The Eminent Domain Ombudsman Act is Reintroduced
in the Assembly”
- News Brief, PRFA, January 2007
“New York State to Use Eminent domain to Take
Private Property for Seneca Indian Casino”
- PRFA News Brief, February 2006
Private homes, hotels, and a newly reopened water park are
to be destroyed to become part of a casino under Gov. Pataki’s
deal with the Seneca Indians.
“Empire State Development Corporation Condemns
Church to Transfer Property to
Seneca Indians”
- PRFA News Brief, February 2006
A non-denominational religious ministry has filed suit to
stop their two-story house in Niagara Falls from being condemned
by the Empire State Development Corp. for the Seneca Gaming Corp.
Senator John A. DeFrancisco Proposes Limits to Eminent
Domain - Letter to Carol W. LaGrasse, November 30, 2005
Senator DeFrancisco has introduced S. 5938,
a bill with three main components to reform the state’s eminent domain laws. First, it limits the
use of eminent domain to true public projects, such as the construction
of highways, schools, or parks.
“Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky Introduces Eminent
Domain Bill” - By Carol W.
LaGrasse (Reprinted from NY Property Rights Clearinghouse, Summer
2005)
Responding to the groundswell of outrage at the U.S. Supreme
Court’s Kelo v. New London decision, NY State
Assemblyman Brodsky has proposed the “2005 Eminent
Domain Reform Act” to build on his earlier eminent
domain reforms. Local government will have to jump through more
hoops, property owners will get more time to appeal, homeowners’
compensation will be improved, tenants will be compensated, and
a commission will explore further protections.
“Eminent Domain Reform passes Legislature Unanimously
Again”
- Summer 2004 (PRFA)
For the second year in a row, Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky
and Sen. Vincent Leibell have shepherded a bill through the New
York State Legislature requiring notification of property owners
before condemnation takes place.
The Downtown Brooklyn Plan - Testimony by State Sen.
Velmanette Montgomery before City Planning Commission, March
24, 2004
The Arena Complex, Atlantic Terminal Complex,
and BAM LDC Complex are part of the Downtown redevelopment plan,
and could radically change the borough of Brooklyn. Blank walls
of high rise buildings would create hostile streets. Eminent
domain might be used for private developments. Funding could
instead preserve history and rehabilitate Downtown, rather than
tearing it down.
“Eminent Domain Threatens Haverstraw Owner for
Supermarket and New Rochelle Owner for Tower Development” - PRFA, Winter 2004
In Haverstraw, the use of eminent domain was contemplated
after the non-profit Housing Opportunities for Growth, Advancement
and Revitalization was unsuccessful in buying the property.
“Governor Pataki Vetoes Eminent Domain Reform”
- By Carol W. LaGrasse (Reprinted
from the NY Property Rights Clearinghouse, PRFA, Fall 2003)
Both houses of the Legislature had unanimously passed a bill
to require written notice to property owners before the condemnation
of their property. Gov. Pataki vetoed the bill on Sept. 22, saying
that it would cost too much, but nearly every other state has
this notice.
“The New York Times gets Power of Condemnation,
Indirectly” (PRFA, January
2002)
March 2001 -
“Lawsuits
Attack Property Seizures—Institute Campaigns Against Condemnations
to Transfer Property to Private Owners” - Carol W. LaGrasse
(March 2001)
Lawsuits filed against New Rochelle, N.Y,; Port Chester, N.Y.;
North Hempstead, N.Y.; The Empire State Development Corporation;
Pittsburgh, Penna.; New London, Conn.; and Atlantic City, N.J.
to stop the use of eminent domain to take property from the little
guy and transfer it to preferred private owners.
N.Y. State Senate Bill S.7192
Reform of Eminent Domain Notification
See Also
Additional Helpful
Organizations
Prospect Heights Action Coalition
Local homeowners,
tenants, and storekeepers organized to fight a new private basketball
stadium and
mammoth highrise redevelopment proposed for central Brooklyn,
where 1000 people in an established area of neighborhood-scale
brownstones, restaurants and shops will be displaced by eminent
domain for a private developer.
www.nostadium.homestead.com
Petition: No Stadium - Prospect Heights Action Coalition to Brooklyn
Boro President Markowitz, NYC
Mayor Bloomberg, NYS Gov. Pataki.
www.PetitionOnline.com/phac/petition.html
Institute for Justice
(a non-profit legal foundation
that defends freedom, is representing property owners in New
York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and other areas where cities
are using eminent domain to take property from small businesses
and homeowners to transfer it to their private businesses, such
as hotels and upscale stores.)
address
Additional Resources
Counteract the Kelo v. New London decision
“Model Resolution by local
Government to Enact a Town Policy and to Petition the State Legislature
to Protect Private Property Owners, Including Homeowners and
Small Businesses, from Eminent Domain for Economic Development”
- PRFA July 2005
Institute
for Justice
Castle
Coalition
“Stop Millwood Firehouse”
Property owner Leo Rotta has launched a web site to help defeat
the fire district’s plan to seize his property in Millwood,
N. Y., by eminent domain to a new $15 million firehouse. “The
rent from this property provides my income,” said Mr. Rotta.
“If I lose, all my property will be lost to taxes and legal
fees. I’ll get nothing.”
Web site
Telephone: Leo Rotta: (914) 337-2725, (914) 941-0491
Port Chester
Downtown property owners fight eminent domain for private redevelopment
and corruption of permit process. www.cvs4pcny.com
Federal lawsuit
www.ourlawsuit.com
deep
qt — EDA’s Follies: Part One
Carola Von Hoffmannstahl-Solomonoff investigates eminent domain
abuse, starting with Park South, Albany, N.Y.
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 Updates
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- “A
Slew of Property Rights Bills Submitted to State Legislature”
- By Carol W. LaGrasse (PRFA, June 2006)
Bi-partisan bills in the New York State Legislature tackle
eminent domain reform, local permit applicant uncertainty, and
uniformity of Adirondack regulations with statewide rules, as
well as economic impact of Adirondack Park Agency and DEC planning.
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- “Assemblyman
Richard Brodsky Introduces Eminent Domain Ombudsman Bill”-
By Carol W. LaGrasse) PRFA, February 2006)
Assemblyman Richard Brodsky (D, Westchester), chair of the
Committee on Corporations, Authorities and Commissions, has introduced
a bill to establish an Eminent Domain Ombudsman to which property
owners faced with eminent domain could go for advice and assistance.
The ombudsman is modeled after the Utah State Property Rights
Ombudsman.
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- “Bill Introduced
by Sen. DeFrancisco Would Limit Eminent Domain” - By
Carol W. LaGrasse (PRFA, February 2006)
An eminent domain reform bill introduced by Senator John A.
DeFrancisco, Chair of the New York State Senate Judiciary Committee,
would limit the use of eminent domain to true public projects
such as highways, schools, and parks; require that eminent domain
by authorities be approved by an elected body, and pay relocation
costs.
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In-Depth Information
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 “Organize Your
Thoughts” - By Carol W. LaGrasse (Property Rights Foundation
of America® Position Brief, May 2008)
When people are beset with difficulties, they often refuse
to set down exactly what is happening to them so that they can
logically convey the situation to a potential source of help.
The defense of private property rights has a much greater chance
when people apply themselves to understanding and conveying their
situation. Six rules for clear communication are illustrated
in this discussion of local siting of a wind farm and electric
transmission system.
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 “Small
Business and Private Property Rights” - By Raymond J.
Keating, Chief Economist, Small Business and Entrepreneurship
Council, Washington, D.C. and Columnist, Newsday, Long
Island, New York; Eleventh Annual National Conference on Private
Property Rights (PRFA, Albany, N.Y., October 13, 2007)
Local zoning often is a tool of special interests to force
small businesses to give up. Government uses its power of eminent
domain for economic development for well-financed entities at
the expense of small business. During the past 100 years, government
has lost respect for private property owners when developing
sports stadiums, which used to fit around private property. In
addition, it should be more recognized that intellectual private
property rights protect the interests of small businesses, not
just “big pharma.”
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- “New
York Property Rights Directions”-Speech by Carol W.
LaGrasse, Cato Institute Conference-“Property Rights on
the March: Where from Here,” December 1, 2006, Washington,
D. C.
An overview of where property rights stand in New York, what
the directions are, and where the work for our cause has been
effective: focusing on the battle to keep land in private hands,
holding off extreme land-use regulation, the issue of conservation
easements, regional preservationist land-use battles, ubiquitous
zoning conflicts; and eminent domain.
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- “A History
of Government Theft” - By Sarah Foster, April 2006,
Reprinted from Whistleblower by permission of WorldNetDaily.com,
publisher.
The U. S. Supreme Court’s Kelo v. New London
ruling was not the beginning of the abuse of eminent domain to
destroy communities for private development. It began in Washington,
D.C., during the 1950s, where slum clearance was the excuse for
cruelly displacing 20,000 residents, mainly families from good
homes, others people in scattered poor conditions, who suffered
especially, and even died, from the evictions.
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 “New
York State Legislative Reform” - By Jim Malatras, Legislative
Director, Office of Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, New York
State Assembly; Speech to the Ninth Annual Conference on Private
Property Rights (PRFA, Albany, N. Y. October 22, 2005)
Jim Malatras discusses key problems with New York’s
eminent domain process, the role of public authorities in eminent
domain, and compares the approach of Assemblyman Brodsky with
others in the context of the Kelo v. New London Supreme
Court Decision.
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 “Eminent
Domain-Where We Are, Where We’ve Been, & Where We Should
Be Going”- By Gideon Kanner, Professor of Law Emeritus,
Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, Tenth Annual National Conference
on Private Property Rights (PRFA, Albany, N.Y., October 14, 2006)
Eminent domain is the dark corner of the law. There is no
“public use” requirement increasingly
in eminent domain, and the “just compensation”
is concededly unjust. The legal development of private eminent
domain took several key turns in American jurisprudence, but
the big problem surfaced in the Berman case in 1954 in
Washington, D.C. Eminent domain for redevelopment in New York
involves favored, wasteful, big money deals.
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 “The Eminent
Domain Crisis” - By James E. Morgan, Esq., Principal,
Galvin & Morgan, Counselors at Law, Delmar, N.Y., Tenth Annual
National Conference on Private Property Rights (PRFA, Albany,
N.Y., October 14, 2006)
Eminent domain is being abused by circumventing New York’s
Enabling Act. The Fifth Amendment right to compensation for a
taking of private property is being denied with the government’s
imposition of transferable development rights for valuable property
in the Long Island Pine Barrens, and with the use of zoning and
smart growth regulation.
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- “Eminent
Domain — Testimony before New York State Judiciary Committee”
- By Carol W. LaGrasse, Albany, New York, April 3, 2006
The security of the property owner will only be restored if
the intended use of the property subject to eminent domain is
restricted to true public uses, not be defining the quality of
the neighborhood that can be condemned. In addition, to level
the playing field, enactment of law to create an office of eminent
domain ombudsman is paramount.
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- “Write for
Property Rights — Act Now, After Kelo, A Time of
Outrage and Opportunity” - By Carol W. LaGrasse (PRFA,
January 2006)
The State Senate hearing at the Capitol left the impression
that delaying action on eminent domain could be used to diffuse
the outrage over the Kelo v. New London ruling. A revised
definition of blight might lull citizens into false security.
But Senator DeFrancisco has a bill to restore constitutional
limits to eminent domain and he and Assemblyman Brodsky have
proposed that condemnation by authorities be approved by elected
bodies.
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- “The
Exercise of Eminent Domain in New York State” -
By Carol W. LaGrasse, President, PRFA, Testimony before Assembly
Committees on Judiciary; Corporations, Authorities and Commissions;
Local Government; and Governmental Operations (Legislative Office
Building, Albany, N.Y., November 1, 2005
Justice demands fundamental reform to New York’s
eminent domain law to prohibit the use of eminent domain to take
property to transfer it to another private owner. In addition,
New York’s eminent domain law should be reformed
to stop the use of eminent domain by unelected quasi-governmental
authorities. To level the playing field, an eminent domain ombudsman
should be established.
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- “New
York State Legislative Reform” - By Jim Malatras, Legislative
Director, Office of Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, New York
State Assembly; Speech to the Ninth Annual Conference on Private
Property Rights (PRFA, Albany, N. Y. October 22, 2005)
Jim Malatras discusses key problems with New York’s
eminent domain process, the role of public authorities in eminent
domain, and compares the approach of Assemblyman Brodsky with
others in the context of the Kelo v. New London Supreme
Court Decision.
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- “Eminent
Domain Reform Needed After Kelo v. New London”
- By Carol W. LaGrasse, President, PRFA. Testimony before the
New York State Senate Committee on Commerce, Economic Development
and Small Business, Senate Committee on Local Government, Legislative
Office Building, Albany, N.Y., October 18, 2005
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- “Rise Up - A Call to Regain
Private Property Rights After Kelo v. New London”
- By Carol W. LaGrasse, (PRFA, July 2005)
Each of us should take on the task of counteracting the U.
S. Supreme Court’s Susette Kelo v. City of New
London decision. We must use our influence on local government
and the state legislature to prohibit eminent domain to take
property from one private owner to transfer it to another private
person for the purpose of economic development.
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- “New
York State Eminent Domain Reform Enacted” - By Carol
W. LaGrasse, New York Property Rights Clearinghouse, Fall
2004
Unanimously passed bi-partisan law shepherded by Democratic
Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky requires individual notice to
property owners facing condemnation. Signed by Gov. Pataki Sept.
14, 2004.
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- “Eminent
Domain Law” - Office of Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky.
Presented by Jim Malatras, Legislative Director, Eighth Annual
National Conference on Private Property Rights (PRFA, Oct. 23,
2004)
People across the ideological spectrum have joined Mr. Brodsky
to successfully reform New York’s eminent domain
law, requiring notification of individual property owners. More
reform lies ahead.
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- “Challenges
to Our Vision” - By Carol W. LaGrasse, Welcome Address,
Eighth Annual N.Y. Conference on Private Property Rights (PRFA,
Oct. 23, 2004)
With our conviction for private property rights, we can counteract
the do-gooders who are using environmental schemes to force rural
people off their land and using eminent domain to destroy downtown
urban neighborhoods.
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 “Root Shock—How
Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America and What We Can Do
About It” - By Dr. Mindy Fullilove, New York State Psychiatric
Institute and Professor of Clinical Psychiatry and Public Health
at Columbia University, New York, New York; Speech to the Eighth
Annual Conference on Private Property Rights (PRFA, Albany,
N. Y. October 23, 2004)
People love the buildings they live in and their neighborhoods.
When urban renewal destroyed 1,600 African American neighborhoods
in the fifties and sixties, the losses were horrific. The black
people called it “Negro removal.” Vibrant
neighborhoods were lost. Nine out of ten jazz clubs died.
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 “Dispossessed”
- By Susan Allen (PRFA, Sept. 2004)
Book Reviews: Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods
Hurts America and What We Can Do About It by Dr. Mindy Thompson
Fullilove and Mists of the Couchsacrage: Rescue from State
Land by Alden L. Dumas
Dr. Mindy Fullilove’s Root Shock captures
the mid-20th-century horror of loss of home in her documentation
of urban renewal. The story Mists of the Couchsacrage
by Alden L. Dumas is haunted by the banished hunting camps destroyed
by New York State’s insatiable lust for wilderness,
which it creates by eliminating the rural culture.
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- The Power
Broker — Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert
A. Caro. Book Review - by Susan Allen, Editor and Publisher
of the Adirondack Park Agency Reporter (PRFA, February
2004)
Surveying all from above, Robert Moses wielded eminent domain
to achieve his grand plans, wiping out New York neighborhoods
in his way. He invented the modern “power authority,”
with its legacy of “public benefit corporations”
having the force of government but virtually immune from citizen
supervision.
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- “Brooklyn
Neighborhood Threatened by Eminent Domain for Private Stadium”
- By Carol W. LaGrasse (PRFA, January 4, 2004)
City and borough officials back downtown skyscraper project,
to begin with Atlantic Yards, centered about new Arena for the
Nets basketball team from New Jersey. Grassroots survey exposes
eminent domain impact on 1,000 Prospect Heights residents and
business people.
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 “Eminent
Domain for Private Gain”- By Dana Berliner, Keynote
Address, Seventh Annual New York Conference on Private Property
Rights (PRFA, October 18, 2003)
Eminent Domain is being widely abused to benefit private parties.
New York is the worst state in the country for abusing the power
of eminent domain. Where the courts are hostile, creative citizen
activists defeat eminent domain.
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- “Governor
Pataki Vetoes Eminent Domain Reform”
- By Carol W. LaGrasse (Reprinted from the NY Property Rights
Clearinghouse, PRFA, Fall 2003)
Both houses of the Legislature had unanimously passed a bill
to require written notice to property owners before the condemnation
of their property. As it is now, when property owners receive
the condemnation notice, it is too late to protest. Gov. Pataki
vetoed the bill on Sept. 22, saying that it would cost too much,
but nearly every other state has this notice.
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 “Eminent
Domain - Current Status, Future Directions” - James
E. Morgan, Speech, Sixth Annual New York Conference on Private
Property Rights (PRFA, November 16, 2002)
Government is misusing eminent domain to transfer property
in so-called “blighted” downtown neighborhoods
to developers. At the same time, where New York’s
eminent domain rules would be the fair answer, Long Island Pine
Barrens properties are zoned for zero use, but receive no compensation.
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