MEDAC released the following statement yesterday:
MEDAC, the Missouri Eminent Domain Abuse Coalition, expresses its disappointment in the eminent domain bill, aka Hobbs' bill, HB1944, which was voted out of the full senate yesterday, May 2nd. Jim Roos, Coordinator, and Joan Botwinick, Secretary of MEDAC, stated that this bill is much inferior to the bill passed last week by a senate committee. The full senate bill allows "unblighted, sanitary, standard" property to be taken if such is located in an area in which a municipality classifies 51% or more of the property as "blighted, unsanitary or substandard." The bill does not define area or blight. An area could be two blighted and one non blighted properties. Blight could be a cracked sidewalk, outmoded design, broken sewer cover, narrow streets, etc. Safe, decent, property could be taken because a neighbor' property is "blighted".
Property rights are not equally protected. Farm Land is explicitly protected from being taken by eminent domain. Any urban property near "blighted" properties is subject to being taken.
Compensation is not equal and not just. Some owner receive 150%, some 125%, and some 100% of "fair market value". Besides that, "Fair market value" is not just compensation. Just compensation should be the full cost to reestablish oneself in equally comfortable, desirable, conditions.
Municipalities claim eminent domain is a necessary tool to remove blight and redevelop an area. In fact many communities that 20-40 years ago were severely distressed, such as Soulard, Lafayette Square, Shaw, and Old North St. Louis, have fully recovered without any eminent domain. Furthermore, eminent domain is only attempted in neighborhoods where development without it is already possible. In really bad areas, noone attempts to use eminent domain to solve the problem.
We request that Governor Blunt not sign this bill and that he declare a moratorium on all eminent domain for private development, to take effect immediately, and that the senate and house ratify that moratorium with it to be in effect until May 2007.
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