George Will:
A blight grows in Brooklyn
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/362/story/1255850.html
BROOKLYN -- On Aug. 27, 1776, British forces routed George
Washington's novice army in the Battle of Brooklyn, which was fought in fields
and woods where today the battle of Prospect Heights is being fought. Americans' liberty is again under assault, but this time by
overbearing American governments.
The fight involves an especially egregious example of
today's eminent domain racket. The issue is a form of government theft that the
Supreme Court encouraged with its worst decision of the last decade -- one that
probably will be radically revised in this one.
The Atlantic Yards site, where 10 subway lines and one
railway line converge, is the center of the bustling Prospect Heights
neighborhood of mostly small businesses and middle-class residences. Its energy
and gentrification are reasons why 22 acres of this area -- the World Trade
Center site is only 16
acres -- are coveted by Bruce Ratner, a politically
connected developer collaborating with the avaricious city and state
governments.
To seize the acres for Ratner's
use, government must claim that the area -- which is desirable because it is vibrant
-- is "blighted." The cognitive dissonance would embarrass Ratner and his collaborating politicians, had their
cupidity not extinguished their sense of the absurd.
The condo of Daniel Goldstein, his wife and year-old
daughter, which cost Goldstein $590,000 in 2003, is on part of the land where Ratner's $4.9 billion project would be built -- with the
assistance of more than $1 billion in corporate welfare from the state and city
governments, which are drowning in red ink. The Goldsteins'
building would not seem blighted to anyone not paid to see blight for the
convenience of the payers. Which is of constitutional
significance.
The Constitution says government may not take private
property other than for a "public use." By "public," the
Framers, who did not scatter adjectives carelessly, meant uses -- roads,
bridges, parks, public buildings -- directly owned or primarily used by the
general public. In 1954, however, in a case concerning a crime- and infectious
disease-ridden section of Washington,
D.C., the court expanded the
notion of "public use" to include removing "blight."
Since then, that term, untethered
from serious social dangers, has become elastic in the service of avarice. In
2005, the court held, 5-4, that New
London, Conn., could
take the property of a middle-class neighborhood and transfer it to a corporate
developer who would pay more taxes to the city government than the evicted
homeowners had paid. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, dissenting, warned that the
consequences of the decision would "not be random." The beneficiaries
would be people "with disproportionate influence and power in the
political process."
Enter Ratner, with plans to build
a huge complex of high-rise residences, commercial properties and a basketball
arena for the NBA's New Jersey
Nets, which he bought. The city and state governments salivated at the thought
of new revenues -- perhaps chimerical -- to waste. The problem was, and is,
that people live and work where Ratner wants to
build.
So blight had to be discovered. It duly was, by a
firm that specializes in such discoveries. New York's highest court ratified
that finding, 6-1.
But a week later, Columbia
University, which has plans for a $6.3
billion expansion in Manhattan,
was stymied in its attempt to wield the life-shattering power of eminent domain
against several local businesses that do not want to be shattered. A state
court held, 3-2, that condemnation proceedings had been unconstitutional. The
court said the blight designation was "mere sophistry": "Even a
cursory examination of the study reveals the idiocy of considering things like
unpainted block walls or loose awning supports as evidence of a blighted
neighborhood."
The idiocy was written on Columbia's
behalf by the same firm the Empire State Development Corporation hired to find
blight at the Brooklyn site.
The Atlantic Yards nonsense was compounded when Ratner, to bolster his balance sheet after the real estate
collapse, sold the Nets to a Russian billionaire, who stands to benefit from Ratner's government-subsidized seizure of other people's
property. Those people can only hope that New York's highest court will grant their
appeal for reconsideration on the grounds that Ratner's
argument is about as good as the Nets are. Through Friday, their record was
3-29.
George Will's e-mail address is georgewill@washpost.com.