Hold the phone!
KDKA-TV reports that a lawyer tells it that “Monroeville leaders could evoke [sic] eminent domain to save” the municipality’s privately owned convention center from becoming a Hobby Lobby store.
If it does, it would be a massive abuse of power that would render every property in the community unsafe from the clutches of government overlords.
Noting that Monroeville officials have authorized an appraisal of the convention center site, attorney Thomas W. King III (who apparently is not directly involved with the situation) told KDKA that post-appraisal, Monroeville could take steps to try to seize the convention center and the property on which it sits by paying the Constitution’s mandated “just compensation.”
“Monroeville would take a public action to condemn the property,” King told the TV station. “They would file papers in the courthouse and the owner of the property would then have the opportunity to dispute whether this was a proper public purpose, and also they would have the right to dispute the value that Monroeville put on it.”
But this would be an unconstitutional farce on its face.
Monroeville seeks to seize the convention center, owned by Oxford Development and set to cease operations on June 1, and either continue to run the center and/or possibly contract with and/or hand it over to another private entity to run it for the local government.
Though the courts have attempted to bend, fold, staple and mutilate the founding principles of invoking (this is the correct word, by the way) eminent domain (and some have succeeded), the original intent of the Fifth Amendment prohibition against the government’s unlawful taking of private property must stand:
“… nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”
What was the original meaning of “public use”? Things like government buildings (i.e., courthouses, town halls, fire houses, schools, etc., etc.), NOT convention centers. Yet governments have done exactly that in other jurisdictions.
Oxford Development has every right to be secure in its possession of its own private property. It also has a right to contract; it already has executed a legal agreement – a lease, a contract — with Hobby Lobby to build a new retail outlet that, by the way, once open, will create new jobs and generate new taxes for Monroeville.
And it’s not as if Monroeville will be left in the lurch without convention and event space: At least one other event space operator, at the All-American Field House and within a half-mile of the closing center, tells KDKA Radio she’s been working in concert with officials of that center to take over previously scheduled events.
And she’s already been contacted by at least 30 organizations looking for event space, she tells KDKA.
Thus, the private marketplace already is stepping up to fill the “void” that Monroeville officials fear, a fear that apparently is driving this latest attempt at government command economics.
Simply put, should they attempt to use eminent domain, they will pervert those natural market forces that are coming into play and overplay its legal hand in one deft swoop.
Never mind that it has become common practice for taxpayers to be molested to build, then subsidize, convention centers, government has absolutely no business doing so.
The only “condemnation” that should be going on here is the public’s condemnation of government yet again doing it damnedest to stifle private economic development.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
