Update June 4, 2003
“Bulletin: McGinty Confirmed to Head Pennsylvania DEP”
In a victory for advocates of stronger central regulation
of land use and industry, the State Senate confirmed Governor
Rendell’s appointment of Clinton environmental bureaucrat
Kathleen A. McGinty to head the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental
Protection on June 3, with a vote of 41 to 8, all “nay”
votes cast by Republicans.
Pennsylvania
- Urgent Action Alert!
Oppose the Appointment of Katie McGinty as Secretary of the Department
of Environmental Protection (PRFA, Jan. 31, 2003)
More on
this topic: Government
Land Ownership and Control — National
July 2001
Pennsylvania Passes Conservation Easement Legislation
With little opposition, the Uniform Conservation Easement Act
passed the Pennsylvania legislature this summer with the all-important
bill’s standard provisions intact that cancel historic common
law provisions against negative encumbrances, but with a revision
to the standard provisions granting third party enforcement powers.
A forest industry amendment added early in the summer is designed
to restrict third party enforcement powers to parties named in
the easement. Last minute wording also adds the purposes of “economic
benefit,” and “managing the land” to the legislation.
Protections for coal rights were incorporated earlier. Pennsylvania
landowners and forest industry had learned about the bill from
PRFA, which had also posted information on the PRFA web page.
Update - June 2001:
“Conservation
Easement Bill in Pennsylvania Legislature-H.R. 975 Would Cancel
Protections for Private Property, Allow Third Parties to Enforce
Conservation Easements” - Carol W. LaGrasse (PRFA, June 2001)
February 2001:
“Montgomery,
Pennsylvania, Plans to Condemn Property for a Trail after it
Loses Lawsuit Against Owners”
Additional Resources
Pennsylvania Independent Petroleum
Producers (PIPP)
address
Additional Helpful
Organizations
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
Pennsylvania Landowners’ Association
Keith Klingler, President
Advocate for landowners; publishes excellent newsletter, “Pennsylvania
Landowner.”
address
Websites
Pennsylvania
Landowners Association
Pennsylvania State
General Assembly
link
Pennsylvania Electronic Bill
Room
link
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State News
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 “Testimony
By Carol W. LaGrasse, President, Property Rights Foundation of
America, Before the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and
Public Lands of the Natural Resources Committee of the U.S. House
of Representatives Regarding H. R. 1286, Washington-Rochambeau
Revolutionary Route National Historic Trail Designation Act,
October 30, 2007”
The proposed 600-mile Washington-Rochambeau Historic Trail
through nine states from Rhode Island to Virginia poses a threat
to private property rights because of the National Park Service’s
pattern of secrecy, lack of true public participation, piecemeal
development, use of municipalities and non-profit agencies as
false fronts, and use of eminent domain (directly, indirectly
through local municipalities, and later to widen trails). Amendments
to H.R. 1286 are proposed to eliminate these deficiencies.
More on this
topic: Trails—National
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- “New
Wave of UNESCO World Heritage Sites Proposed” - By 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.
More on this
topic: Biosphere
Reserves & World Heritage Sites
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- “New
Land Designation Threatens Northern New Jersey Communities”
- 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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Katie McGinty
Photo: Peter J. LaGrasse |
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Maggie and Andy Rakiecki |
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 Death
by Zoning - by Jack Down, President of Citizens Against Repressive
Zoning (C.A.R.Z.) (February 4, 2002)
Jack Down’s moving summary of the roster
of people killed in recent years because of zoning enforcement.
Jump to Pennsylvania
story.
More on this
topic: Zoning
& Buliding Codes—Nat’l
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- “Perkiomen
Trail Poses a Threat to Private Property Owners”-by
Carol W. LaGrasse, The Mercury, Pottstown, Pennsylvania,
June 10, 2001
After losing a court battle where it claimed to have acquired
title to an old railroad right-of way, Montgomery County, which
is northwest of Philadelphia, has begun condemning the property
for a trail. The course of the trail, which is named after the
nearby Perkiomen Creek, follows the old rail bed as well as some
of extensive parkland along the creek. This Opinion piece explains
that Perkiomen Trail poses a threat to private property owners
in two important respects: the construction of the trail route
itself and the broader long-term acquisition plans to gobble
up the private land along the creek and join the waterfront to
the rail bed in a greenway.
More on this
topic: Rails
to Trails — National
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 “Testimony of Victoria Pozsgai-Khoury
Before The House Committee on Government Reform, October 6, 2000”
In response to Rep. Burton’s invitation to
describe the their “family’s experience
dealing with the Army Corps of Engineers and the EPA in order
to comply with the federal government’s wetlands
policy,” Mr. Pozsgai’s two daughters,
Victoria Khoury and Gloria Heater, spoke eloquently of the federal
government’s injustice that has trapped John Pozsgai
for approximately fifteen years. Victoria Khoury’s
testimony about her father’s flight to the United
States during the 1956 Hungarian revolution and how he worked
forty years to build a life for his family in freedom was heart-rending.
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