Opinion: Bill gives cities carte blanche ‘takings’ power
Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2021 signed a law that returns property to the heirs of a family victimized by Manhattan Beach, which used the power of eminent domain to take the couple’s oceanfront resort for transparently racist reasons. Senate Bill 746 not only restored, albeit belatedly, a modicum of justice — but reminded us what happens when government has too much power to take private property.
Governments have the power of eminent domain but, under the limitations embedded in the Constitution, are supposed to limit those takings to public projects and pay fair-market compensation. Governments traditionally used this power to build freeways and rail lines that require the acquisition of long slivers of land.
The process wasn’t confined to California. In 2005’s Kelo decision, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the city of New London, Conn., to take non-blighted property to promote an economic-development project. In her dissent, then-Justice Sandra Day O’Connor argued correctly that the government now “has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more.”
In 2011, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law eliminating those agencies because of the drain they imposed on the state budget, which was required to backfill tax revenues the agencies diverted from public schools and traditional services. Yet municipal planners and crony capitalists have continued to push for its return. Most recently, Assembly member David Alvarez, D-Chula Vista, introduced a bill to revive these agencies — despite their terrible legacy.
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