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- Index page of articles written by Nate Dickinson, a wildlife
biologist.
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The National Heritage Area program is intended to give
the National Park Service national land use control. “Partnerships”
with local government and non-profits, and associated trails,
are the key. (This is the short testimony version presented orally.
Notes contain further details.)
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- by Carol W. LaGrasse, from Positions on Property,
Vol. 1, No. 2, Supplement (PRFA, May 1994).
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From Carol W. LaGrasse, PRFA April 19, 2005
The Glimmerglass Heritage National Register Historic District
illustrates the need to honestly warn property owners of the
regulatory impact of listing on the National Historic Register
and the importance of requiring individual property owner consent.
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- By Carol W. LaGrasse, Reprinted from the New York Property
Rights Clearinghouse, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Spring 2005).
Formal listing on the National Historic Register is deceptively
portrayed by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and
Historic Preservation as non-regulatory, but, once the designation
is in place, the agency uses the weight of its office to enforce
the designation when a building or zoning permit application
is made.
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- Chart.
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- Index page of information about the National Park
Service.
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- Update, reprinted from the New York Property Rights
Clearinghouse, Vol. 5 No. 2 (Fall 2001).
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- Chart.
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- By Rick Kenyon of Glennallen, Alaska (presented at the
August 14, 2006 Hearing - Committee on Government Reform, Anchorage,
Alaska)
For three decades, the National Park Service has run amok,
mistreating inholders within the Alaskan National Parks: —
forcing almost all the historic placer miners to give up their
claims, contrary to ANILCA, denying property owners access to
their homes, causing them to lose their property, punishing them
for their wilderness way of life, and dragging them into federal
court on trumped-up charges. The Service provides its own employees
exclusive, luxurious wilderness accommodations.
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-By Carol W. LaGrasse (PRFA, November 16, 2004)
The Endangered Species Act should not be re-authorized unless
full protection for private property rights is provided. Presentation
points to the National Endangered Species Act Reform Coalition
(NESARC) meeting, American Farm Bureau Federation Headquarters,
Washington, D.C.
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- By Craig M. Call, Utah State Property Rights Ombudsman
Speech to the Ninth Annual National Conference on Private
Property Rights (PRFA, Albany, N.Y., October 22, 2005)
The Utah Property Rights Ombudsman has successfully acted
as a neutral third party to make sure that people have straight
answers to the questions that they face in land use and eminent
domain situations involving state and local government. “I
try to make the law work better for individuals who call me,”
said Mr. Call. U. S. Senator Orrin Hatch has proposed legislation
for a federal property rights ombudsman within the Department
of Transportation.
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“National Wildlife Federation Admits Piracy
and Pays $350,000 For Copyright Infringement” News
Release - March 2, 2005
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The National Wildlife Federation has admitted to pirating
the copyrighted work, The First Forest, by children’s
book author John Gile and has paid $350,000.00 to terminate civil
copyright litigation in Federal Court.
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- By Carol W. LaGrasse (PRFA, February 2, 2004)
Rep. Christopher H. Smith has a draft bill to create a National
Wildlife Refuge for the Hamilton-Trenton Marsh and Crosswicks
Creek. Sportsmen, boaters, and property owners are angry, because
a lock-out except for biologists, birders, canoers, and hikers
would displace the established uses of the area.
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- by Nate Dickinson, Wildlife Biologist (PRFA, Aug. 15, 2002)
“Environmental Policy” is the mantra for nationalization
of land in Britain and the U.S.
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- (Reprinted from the New York Property Rights Clearinghouse,
PRFA, Summer 2002)
The Twenty-First Century Commission’s 1990 wilderness
plan was defeated by locals, but land acquisition goals are fast
being executed.
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- By Carol W. LaGrasse (PRFA, December 8, 2003)
The New Jersey delegation maneuvered the “Highlands
Stewardship Act,” with $110 million for land acquisition,
into the “Healthy Forest Restoration Act,”
the bill that Western states ardently sought to reduce the risk
of catastrophic forest fires, but the addition was stripped in
conference.
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- By Don Fife (January 2002).
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Carol W. LaGrasse (PRFA Position Brief, June 2007)
This spring, the National Park Service announced that 36 locations
in the United States have been proposed for UNESCO World Heritage
Sites, adding to the twenty that already are designated in this
country. Such international recognition potentially threatens
private property rights because preservationists could exploit
the designation to stop the use of land in the region just beyond
a site’s borders.
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- Index page of information about New York citizen’s
strategies foe defending private property rights.
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- News Brief - Fall 2000.
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- News Brief - Summer 2002.
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- Update February 2001.
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- Index page of information about the New York City
Catskill Watershed.
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— Adele Aguirre, Carmel, N.Y., from Proceedings
of the Third Annual New York Conference on Private Property Rights
(PRFA 1998)
The personal story of how Tai and Adele Aguirre endured the
harassment of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection
(DEP) walking on their property, staring through their windows,
bringing a lawsuit to their door “with armbands and everything,
guns,” coming back to test their septic system every day
but finding nothing wrong, and the rescue of the Aguirres by
Atlantic Legal Foundation.
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Bulletin: October 2001 - Farm Worker Housing Exempted from
Local Zoning
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- By Carol W. LaGrasse (PRFA, April 30, 2004
New York State again has the highest taxes of any state. High
taxes and hostile regulations have been driving businesses and
residents out of New York for years. Real estate taxes are now
critical because of the State’s custom of passing
down half the cost of Medicaid to localities and property owners.
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- Observations and Recommendations
for Reform.
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- DEC and The Nature Conservancy appraise endangered, threatened
and rare species on government and private land.
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-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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- Reprinted from N.Y. Property Rights Clearinghouse,
Vol. I, No. 4 (PRFA, Fall 2004)
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- By Carol W. LaGrasse (Reprinted from New York
Property Rights Clearinghouse, Summer 2003)
The state’s highest court ruled on July 2, 2003
that it is not necessary for an applicant for a variance to show
“practical difficulty” or “unnecessary
harship,” because the state law requiring that the
benefit to the applicant be weighed against the detriment to
the health, safety and welfare of the community, and other factors,
preempts local law establishing stricter standards.
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This 5-page report summarizes the status of DEC’s commitments
made in the consent decree in the Galusha lawsuit for handicapped
access to the State Forest Preserve.
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- Commission on Rural Resources Backs Senate Bills to Help
Landowners and Model Local Law to Make Life Difficult, Environmental
Regulation of Timber Harvesting is The Answer. By Carol W. LaGrasse
(March 2002).
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- 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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- 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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- By Nate Dickinson, Wildlife Biologist (PRFA, October 3,
2002)
The joint land conservation plan just issued by the Department
of Environmental Conservation and the Office of Parks, Recreation
and Historic Preservation “leads thinking readers to believe
that they are confronted with a blueprint for the progressive
nationalization of all open space and other choice real estate
in the State of New York.”
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- Press Release: October 16, 1995.
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- Reform of Eminent Domain Notification, April 15, 2002.
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- By Carol W. LaGrasse, PRFA, January 2005
Paul and Janet Smith lost their challenge in the New York
State Court of Appeals to the conservation easement imposed by
the Town of Mendon. But the scathing dissents in the 4-3 decision
reasoned that the imposition was arbitrary and capricious, and
that it was an unconstitutional “taking.”
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- Press Release, House Resources Committee, February 25,
2004:
The Pacific Legal Foundation won a victory in the Ninth Circuit
Court of Appeals on February 24 over the National Marine Fisheries
Service, which was illegally invoking the Endangered Species
Act by keeping fish counts artificially low by counting only
naturally spawned, but not hatchery raised, genetically identical
salmon.
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- by Tom Bethell, Senior Editor, The American Spectator,
Speech at the Sixth Annual New York Conference on Private Property
Rights (PRFA, November 16, 2002)
Private property has been neglected by economists, but is
the logical starting point of economic analysis. Mr. Bethell
points to the role of private property in the development of
Western civilization, contrasting it with the failed one-hundred
year “experiment” in Communism.
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- Bare Reality of Protection of Public Health, Safety and
Welfare, reprinted from the New York property Rights Clearinghouse,
Vol. 5, No. 2 (Fall 2001).
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- The Perennial “No Net Gain” rallying cry is appealing,
but this idea has such important pitfalls that the property rights
movement ought to reject it. By Carol W. LaGrasse (PRFA
Briefing Paper, March 16, 1999)
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- This e-mail discusses whether the state or local government,
or the National Park Service would own the Adirondack segment
of the North Country trail, initially and ultimately; what the
width of the land that is owned or managed for the trial will
be; and what the width of the functional walking trail that is
cleared and maintained will be.
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- Official Park Service comment on the Draft Adirondack
Park Trail Plan for the North Country National Scenic Trail.
A particular point that needed clarifying, was that the 47 miles
of “New Trail” that will need to be built
is in addition to the 27 miles of “Temporary Corridor.”
These two categories total 74 miles in addition to the 70 miles
of “Existing Trail” (including “herd
paths”). A future Memorandum of Understanding is
proposed, which would cover acquisitions, administrative policy,
marking the trail, shared-use trails (to ultimately be hiking-only),
and compatibility with range of existing landowners and landscapes.
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- Charts.
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- Index page of information about the Northern Forest
Lands.
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- Bath Petroleum Storage, et al., v. New York State DEC,
et al., New York State Court of Appeals (Civil Appeal No.
01-02144, Nov. 4, 2002)
Bath Petroleum Storage, Inc. and E.I.L. Petroleum, Inc. (BPSI)
applied for a renewal of its State Pollutant Discharge Elimination
System Permit that had been in effect for 24 years. DEC issued
a number of notices of incomplete application that sought addition
information. In many cases, however, the information sought was
not new; rather DEC demanded that BPSI change its answers to
particular questions contained in the application. Despite numerous
supplemental submissions, DEC denied the application on the basis
that it was incomplete. On appeal, the administrative law judge
determined that BPSI was not entitled to a hearing, which was
confirmed by the DEC deputy commissioner. However, upon BPSI’s
filing of an Article 78 proceeding, Livingston County Supreme
Court Judge Raymond E. Cornelius made three clear points in favor
of BPSI, the final point being that DEC’s reliance on its
completeness determination to deny the permit application and
thereby block BPSI from ever challenging DEC’s actions by
obtaining a hearing was arbitrary and capricious. Ignoring the
plain meaning of the statutes and regulations, as well as the
principles of interpretation established by the court, the Appellate
Division Fourth Department reversed Judge Cornelius’s ruling
in a two-paragraph summary opinion stating that its inquiry was
limited to determining whether DEC had articulated a rational
basis for its decision, without ever considering Judge Cornelius’s
statutory/regulatory findings.BPSI asks the Court of Appeals
to consider whether the DEC may ignore the plain, unambiguous
language of a carefully crafted regulatory scheme in exercising
its discretionary powers and do so in a manner that effectively
rewrites the unambiguous statutes.
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- Bath Petroleum Storage, Inc., et al., v. New York State
DEC, et al., New York State Court of Appeals (Civil Appeal
No. 01-02144, Nov. 22, 2002)
The Notice points out that the case presents many legal and
policy issues of state, regional, and national concern due to
Bath Petroleum’s contribution and importance to propane
gas supply levels in New York State and the northeast.
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- By Nate Dickinson, Wildlife Biologist (PRFA, December 12,
2003
Review of “Outsmarting Smart Growth - Population
Growth, Immigration, and the Problem of Sprawl” by
Beck, Kolankiewicz, and Camarota (Center for Immigration Studies,
2003). Dickinson questions the assumptions underlying the report,
and asks whether planners are interested in changing the complexion
of a free society. Statistics for agricultural acreage show that
the U.S. A. is getting wilder, contrary to the report’s
drift. He states that the report’s immigration statistics
prove the need to rethink immigration policy. Illegal immigration
must be simply halted.
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