Napolitano vetoes property rights bill on slum clearance
by Paul Davenport on Jun. 06, 2006, under Local, SpecialPHOENIX — Gov. Janet Napolitano on Tuesday vetoed a bill to impose new restrictions on municipalities’ use of eminent domain to clear slum areas.
The bill (HB2675) would have prohibited using eminent domain to boost tax revenue if the planned new use doesn’t have an additional public purpose. It also would prohibit condemnation of non-blighted property within a declared slum area and set a new legal standard that local governments must clear before designating areas as blighted.
Additionally, it would have given property owners the right to improve conditions to avoid inclusion in designated slum or blighted areas, impose new disclosures before local governments can make the designations and shorten the length to five years from ten.
The legislation was supported by groups representing property rights advocates, small businesses and home builders and opposed by the League of Arizona Cities and Towns and individual cities and towns as well as groups representing planners and environmentalists.
Local government officials argued that eminent domain is an important tool for community improvement, while property rights advocates contended that power has been abused by local governments to favor developers at the expense of property owners.
State law currently allows municipalities to use eminent domain to acquire slum or blighted private land for redevelopment.
The measure, one of a few surviving legislative proposals intended to crack down on eminent domain, was stalled in the Senate for more than a month before the Legislature completed action on the bill on May 25.
The Senate on March 22 voted to put a wide-ranging referendum on the November ballot but it has been hung up in the House, where members killed an identical measure.
Introduction of the measures for this year’s legislative session followed a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year which allowed a Connecticut condemnation for economic development purposes to go forward.
The Arizona Constitution already contains protections for property owners that courts invoked in separate rulings when rejecting proposed condemnations for high-profile redevelopment projects in Mesa and Tempe. In each case, a court ruled that the acquisition for private redevelopment didn’t qualify as an allowed public use.
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ON THE WEB
Arizona Legislature: www.azleg.gov
Institute for Justice: www.ij.org/index.html
League of Arizona Cities and Towns: www.azleague.org
