The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects the rights of American citizens by placing a number of restraints on the government. “Individual rights are not meant to make the government’s job easier,” says Albemarle Delegate Rob Bell. “They’re meant to make it harder.” One restriction the Bill of Rights sought to impose was on the taking of private property for public use.
After the Supreme Court issued their 2005 ruling in Kelo v. City of New London (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/kelo_V._New_London)—finding that the condemnation of 15 homes pursuant to an economic development plan qualified as a “public use” —Bell and the rest of the Virginia legislature decided that it was time to take up the issue.
 A pox on your decision, many libertarians have cried since Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the majority opinion in Kelo v. City of New London. Local Delegate Rob Bell had a bill pass this session that limits the government’s use of eminent domain. |
irginia’s first attempt was unsuccessful. “It was frankly a pretty modest attempt at dealing with it,” Bell says.
In 2006, Bell joined a taskforce on the issue. After what he describes as “lots and lots of effort and drafts and time,” a bill finally passed on February 24—the last day of the legislative session—that places a number of limitations on the State’s use of eminent domain.
One of the aspects House Bill 2954 (www.legl.state.va.us), which Bell introduced, addresses most thoroughly is the concept of “blight,” which in Kelo served as the excuse for condemnation. “If you don’t go back and address things like blight you’ve left the back door so widely open that closing the front door doesn’t do any good,” says Bell. The new bill defines “blighted property” as “any property that endangers the public health and safety,” or that “constitutes a public nuisance,” or “is beyond repair or unfit for human habitation or use.”
While the bill was an unusually work-intensive effort, Bell is more than satisfied with the protections it accords. “All of us realize it would be easier to redevelop a multiple-block area if you didn’t have to worry about individual property owners who are still keeping up their place,” he says. “We think the concern of the individual property owners trumps that concern.”
Bell also introduced a constitutional amendment restricting the use of eminent domain, but that measure did not pass the Senate.
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