Lawmakers target eminent domain

Last year’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling confirming the right of government to take private property, even for commercial purposes, created unease around Idaho.

House Speaker Bruce Newcomb’s bill setting strict conditions for condemnation to occur in the state may be the best way to protect individual property rights, according to most who spoke at a House State Affairs Committee meeting Friday. The committee voted unanimously to send House Bill 408 to the full House.

The bill sets three conditions that must be met for a government agency to condemn property: identifiable threat to building occupants; risk to public health, safety morals or welfare; and conducive to poor health, diseases, infant mortality, juvenile delinquency or crime.

“I believe simply put that this is the scalpel versus the machete approach to solving the Kelo case,” said Sen. John McGee, R-Caldwell, referring to the Kelo v. New London (Conn.) court ruling.

McGee was joined by seven others in praising the bill, including representatives from the Idaho Cattle Association and the Idaho Association of Cities. No one spoke against it.

Newcomb, a Republican from Burley, consulted the state attorney general and the governor’s legal counsel in drafting the bill. Both of them, he said, think it protects the rights of private property owners. “We have two legal minds who agree, and that’s unusual,” Newcomb said.

Dave Hensley, the governor’s legal counsel, told the committee, “It strikes an appropriate balance between private property rights and eminent domain without undermining the utility of eminent domain as a tool for local governments or the state.”

Newcomb said eminent domain has been used just once in Idaho in the past 35 years, but added that he has heard agencies like to have the threat of exercising it when negotiating property acquisitions.

“They kind of liked having that hammer when they negotiated,” Newcomb said. “That was sufficient for me to say we need to have this bill in place to protect the private property rights of the individual.”

John Eaton of the Idaho Association of Realtors said eminent domain is the most important issue to association members this legislative session. “What this bill does is exactly what our folks who have been involved from the start of the case have asked us to do,” Eaton said.