A Stitch in Haste

As you may recall, the holding in the abominable case Kelo v. New London, No. 04-108 (2005), was that seizing property, via eminent domain, from one private party to give to another private party for the sake of economic development was a "public use" under the Fifth Amendment.

You might have thought it couldn't get any worse than that.

You'd be wrong:

A year after the county filed suit to condemn the 1,019-acre Ballardini Ranch, the two sides are steered toward a jury trial set for May.
...
"It's a very nice piece of property, which is why there's a battle over it," said Mike Chapman, the attorney representing Washoe County in its eminent domain case against the ranch's owner, Minnesota-based Evans Creek, LLC.

"This is really the last of the large ranches near town that has not been developed with houses," Chapman said, arguing the land should be protected as open space and parkland providing access to the forested mountains to the west.

So first we had Kelo saying that seizing land to foster economic development was a "public use," and now we have this Nevada county claiming that seizing land to prevent economic development is also a public use.

Can anyone say they're surprised?

Of course, restricting private development is nothing new -- property rights infringements such as zoning and historic preservation have a long and sordid history. But now such laws are almost extraneous. Local governments can simply invoke Kelo, or more correctly, "reverse-Kelo."

Because at the end of the day that's Kelo's true holding, which might actually be dubbed "Kelo-plus" -- "public use" now means anything and everything that the local hack politicians want it to mean.

The Ballardini Ranch case is different from Kelo in one respect, however: namely the other Fifth Amendment guarantee in eminent domain, "just compensation" --

A county appraisal last year put the ranch's value at $18.6 million. Evans Creek, which purchased the land in 1998 for $8.5 million, countered that the property was really worth hundreds of millions of dollars when development potential is factored in. ... The county's new appraisal puts the current value of the Ballardini Ranch at $30.2 million. A different appraisal prepared for Evans Creek by a Grass Valley, Calif., company estimates the value at $96.2 million, a difference of $66 million.

So the county is trying to steal -- or just to destroy -- tens of millions of dollars in economic value.

That's now what "public use" means.

Expect more creative definitions of what was once an unambiguous term, as local politicians grow ever more bold in their use of eminent domain.

Hat tip to Out of Control.