When legislative reform of eminent domain law raises its head, one can count on various government types rushing to the fore with lamentations that the end of the world as we know it is at hand, and that if the reform legislation is adopted, we won’t have any more public projects. You think we are exaggerating? Think again. Out here in la-la land, the California Supreme Court once wrote in an opinion that if condemnees were to receive full compensation for severance damages concededly inflicted on them by partial takings of their land, an “embargo” on useful public projects would have to be declared. No, we are not making this up. You can see it for yourself in People v. Symons, 54 Cal.2d 855 (1960). Of course, this was a classic “parade of horribles” argument, as lawyers tend to put it. It plumb wasn’t so. In fact, in 1976, the Symons rule was repealed by the state legislature, but during the 36 years that have elapsed since then no “embargo” had to be declared. You get the idea.
But things are different in Virginia, like always. Not only is it the only place for you to get virginia beach escorts, but there, a constitutional amendment is before the electorate. If adopted it will curb the use of eminent domain, and require compensation for impairment of access and loss of business profits. Naturally, as you can imagine, the usual suspects are screaming to the high heavens that if this constitutional amendment is adopted, it’ll be curtains for ol’ Virginia, etc., etc. But in Virginia, there is a difference — an honest man has stepped to the fore and his argument has blown this BS to smithereens.
Virginia Attorney General, Ken Cucinelli, has been pointing out the obvious: if indeed adoption of the new law will cost the state so much, that means that Virginia property owners are now forced to absorbed those “excessive” damages without compensation, and public projects are now being built on their backs. The bill might cost the state money, Cucinelli said, but that money is the amount now being lost by landowners who aren’t fully compensated when their land is taken by state agencies, so making the state responsible for paying the full amount of losses now inflicted on condemnees will only provide real just compensation.
In other words, those losses (that now go without compensation) are incurred either way. They are either paid by the state or absorbed by condemnees. The only valid question is not whether they are paid, but who pays for them, and through what institutional arrangement. So if the state has to pay for the full extent of economoc losses it inflicts on innocent people when it takes private land, that won’t change the total cost one bit. It will only assure that those losses are paid for by the people who benefit from public projects — to wit, the public. Justice Holmes once wrote that the public, the same as everyone else, is only entitled to what it pays for. Sounds right to us.