Dakota Beacon

If "Thou shalt not covet," and "Thou shalt not steal," were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free. Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty. Property must be secured, or liberty cannot exist. - John Adams

Maybe you thought I was exaggerating the other day when I was cautioning against a “flexible” attitude toward the taking of property through eminent domain or other seizure of property. On that occasion the seizure in question was a put-up tax sale of a man’s property, costing him $104,000.00 in equity. He had underpaid his taxes, in error, by $8.41. The basic idea was that ethics and fairness have no place when “developers” enter the picture. Often these “developers” disappoint in the end. In the famous Kelo case nothing was ever built on the land which was seized. The homes were razed but no new development occurred. The same thing happened to me personally in Minnesota. Exactly the same, except it wasn’t such a famous case. The first of these was a tax seizure and the other two here were eminent domain – property taken at figurative gunpoint by the government for a developer. They amounted to the same thing because in the first case, the tax law had been written expressly so that people’s property could be taken away and redeveloped the minute they were a penny short or a second late on their taxes.

You’d think that pretty well wrapped up the various ways in which land could be legally stolen from property owners. But Colorado has gone them one better: there it isn’t even necessary under the law to involve the government at all. Developers are empowered to set up their own little districts for the purpose of stealing property they want.

There is a proper role for eminent domain. First of all it should be something which required government action – not simply the coveting of a property by another and grabbing it. Secondly, it should be granted only in cases where the entire public directly benefits – not indirectly (as in, “the public benefits from a larger development because we can tax them for a greater sum”, so the “public” will “benefit”). It should be for a road or bridge deemed necessary which the public will use, a military base, which in effect protects the national security, a utility such as electrical service, pipelines, etc. which are for public use or projects intended to protect property such as diking, dams, firefighting stations in woods, etc. Not for indirect financial gain or for the benefit of a “developer”.

North Dakota has had issues with eminent domain in the past and this is likely to continue. It is legitimate to use it to enable completion of projects already fully committed to by government. It is legitimate for a project directly benefiting the public as a whole which is fully committed to and carried out by a private entity or quasi-private company such as a power co-op or pipeline. It is not legitimate in the case of a supposed indirect benefit (such as a larger tax contribution anticipated from a developer or similar indirect benefit) from a private entity.

This is simply wrong. The public cannot benefit in the long run from stealing land from one owner and giving it – or selling it – to another. It is not enough to offer “compensation”. No one will ever agree on that compensation being equitable. If a private entity wants to acquire a property, the appropriate move is for that party to make an offer to the owner. Then they can negotiate the amount to be paid or the sale will not happen.

There are many reasons why we need to resist the arguments of those silver-tongued developers. The ownership of property is a right, not a “privilege”. A right. Our economic stability hinges upon that absolute right. If we allow this to become tentative, we seriously hinder investment. This is too simple to even explain or dissect. It is understood on its face. When a man believes his property can be stolen in this way he will become ever more reluctant to either buy or improve his property, or even maintain it.

It is not good enough for one private entity to use the government or its agencies as a cat’s paw to steal property of others either. That Donald Trump stated that he thought the Kelo decision by the Supreme Court (enabling a developer to steal a person’s private home) was “great” was one of the reasons that I did not vote for him in 2016. Some things are too basic to step over with this kind of disregard.

John Adams observed: “The balance of power in a society, accompanies the balance of property in land. The only possible way, then, of preserving the balance of power on the side of equal liberty and public virtue, is to make the acquisition of land easy to every member of society; to make a division of land into small quantities, so that the multitude may he possessed of landed estates. If the multitude is possessed of the balance of real estate, the multitude will take care of the liberty, virtue, and interest of the multitude, in all acts of government.” He was fully cognizant of the importance of ownership of property. Property which can be stolen or “seized” - unless for an urgent and completely public purpose – cannot be said to even be “owned”.

This is one of the chief arguments against property tax. Pathetically, when North Dakota voters had the opportunity to stand up for property rights they blinked. It was a mistake and we make these mistakes by substituting “convenience”, “expediency”, or a cynical attitude toward “development” for moral right. We are never rewarded in the end for abusing fundamental rights for a short-cut to some “sophisticated” economic idea. We are rewarded best when we maintain our morality and try above all else to obey principles set forth in our Constitution. We keep thinking we have outgrown it, that we are now too smart to need it anymore. When we think this way we are heading for our doom. That is not an overstatement, by the way. It has been doom for many. Maybe someday it will be doom for you.