Property Rights
The Libertarian Party of Oklahoma supports strict protections of property rights.
Eminent Domain
The Libertarian Party of Oklahoma supports SQ 729, the Protect Our Homes initiative.(Although enough signatures were collected to put SQ 726 on the ballot, the Oklahoma Supreme Court recently knocked the Protect Our Homes initiative off the ballot on legal technicality.)
Oklahomans in Action is trying to stop overspending and protect our homes with two initiatives on the ballot for 2006.
Scott Bullock and Justin Gelfand want to stop eminent domain abuse in Oklahoma.
Oklahoma Supreme Court defends private property from someeminent domain excesses.
The meaning of Kelo v. New London explained a year after the Supreme Court hearings. More about Protecting Private Property here.
Interested in eminent domain laws? Buy Abuse of Power by Steven Greenhut.
Is Atlas Shrugging? A bank strikes a blow against Kelo: No Cash for Condemners.
Thousands of guns were taken from New Orleans residents. Does the second amendment yield for hurricanes?
Speak up for property rights
By Scott Bullock and Justin GelfandThe Oklahoman, 5/28/06
http://newsok.com/article/1854222/
Is your home important to you? If it is, a proposed constitutional amendment in Oklahoma prohibiting the government from using eminent domain for private profit is the next step in saving homes, businesses, farms and houses of worship from the government's wrecking ball.
Under state law, the government can take people's land and hand it over to a private developer simply by calling it "blighted." Just ask the Rev. Roosevelt Gildon. Local authorities are threatening to condemn his vibrant church in the heart of Sand Springs for a shopping center. Or ask the hundreds of people in Midwest City whose 182 homes and 60 businesses were seized and bulldozed in the past few years to make way for a mall that has yet to be built.
Citizens throughout Oklahoma, people who want nothing more than to keep what they rightfully own, have faced similar struggles. Last summer, the U.S. Supreme Court's outrageous decision in Kelo v. City of New London opened the floodgates even more by permitting the government to seize private property for economic development -- a rationale that this state's Supreme Court thankfully just rejected. But that doesn't mean the threat is gone, since Oklahoma's Neighborhood Redevelopment and Housing Authorities Acts contain such broad definitions of "blight" that just about any property could qualify for condemnation.
Fortunately, the Oklahoma Legislature understands the potential for abuse, and has heeded the court's call and the overwhelming public outcry by considering a proposed amendment to the state constitution. If enacted, the amendment would do exactly what the nation's highest court failed to do: stop eminent domain abuse in the Sooner State.
But, despite the fact it has already passed both legislative houses, the few remaining defenders of eminent domain abuse -- specifically the municipalities that stand to gain from the practice -- have launched their lobbyists into full force in a last-ditch effort to stop meaningful reform. They're pressuring legislators simply not to address the legislation, therefore preventing it from going to the voters by their inaction.
It's now more important than ever for Oklahomans to demand this reform. If private property means anything at all, it must mean being able to keep what you already rightfully own without the government forcing you to sell it if officials decide some other use is more preferable-or more profitable.
As the national backlash to Kelo indicates, momentum against eminent domain abuse has spread across America, and it's only getting bigger. Oklahomans, including their highest court, understand just how important it is to protect private property from being taken for private profit. It's time legislators take that last step by sending the proposed constitutional amendment to the voters in November. Bullock is a senior attorney and Gelfand a staff writer with the Institute for Justice, which litigated the Kelo case before the U.S.
State law shines in court decision
Oklahoman Editorial 5/11/06http://newsok.com/article/1840480/
Last summer's U.S. Supreme Court decision regarding eminent domain led to much hue and cry across the country, including here in Oklahoma where legislators and others scurried to ensure that personal property rights were protected. A decision by our state Supreme Court should help calm those nerves.
In a case from Muskogee County, the court said a plan to take private property to build three water pipelines for a proposed private electric generation plant violated our state constitution's provisions on eminent domain. The county had argued that the eminent domain law allowed for such a taking because economic development constitutes a "public purpose" as defined by the law and the state constitution.
Not so, the court said. Justices said seizures made solely for economic development and "not in connection with the removal of blighted property" don't constitute public use under Oklahoma's constitutional eminent domain provisions, which they noted provide private property owners with more protection than what's guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution. That message has been preached often by those who have urged legislators not to overreact to last summer's decision in Kelo v. New London. One of the leaders has been Dan Batchelor, president of the Center for Economic Development Law.
Writing in The Oklahoman last fall, Batchelor noted that in the Kelo case, the Supreme Court upheld a decision previously made by Connecticut's legislature. "Fortunately, the laws of Oklahoma vary from those of Connecticut," he wrote. "Unlike Connecticut, our state does not allow local governments to condemn private property merely because it could be put to a greater economic use ... The rush to respond to the Connecticut case creates a risk of passing laws to solve a problem that simply does not exist here in Oklahoma."
Our state Supreme Court's decision should further slow that rush.