An Emerald City Legislative Wish-list

We'd like to draw attention to this morning's Standard-Examiner story , wherein Scott Schwebke reports that the Godfrey administration has compiled a Utah legislative wish-list. The Std-Ex is labeling it a city council wish list actually; but we already know who controls the city council agenda, don't we? (Helpful hint: NOT the city council.)

OGDEN - The City Council will consider adopting a wish list tonight that it hopes the Utah Legislature will tackle during its 2007 session to address transportation funding and eminent domain, among other issues.

That's right, folks. Boss Godfrey has been pining over the opportunity to get back into the property condemnation business. Draconian public projects require draconian government powers, and the uber-draconian Boss Godfrey craves as much of the latter as he can get.

Word on the legislative street is that neoCON State Senator Scott Jenkins (Godfrey's cousin, believe it or not) will be carrying the eminent domain ball in the legislature this year. Jenkins has been on the public stump recently, touting the sheer wonderfulness of the power of eminent domain loudly and often. Senator Jenkins' bill, we're told, would look something like the bill that's on tonight's council wish-list:

The city wants a threshold of "receptiveness" that requires at least two-thirds of property owners representing at least half of the land area to either be under an option to buy or willing to sell before eminent domain can be used to obtain remaining hold-out parcels.

That's some improvement, we say. Instead of having one little twerp on the city hall ninth floor making decisions to condemn your private property for transfer to some fat-cat developer, Godfrey, Jenkins and their neoCON ilk would turn the decision over to two-thirds of your caring neighbors.

Among other stories that's been making the rounds in the Weber County luncheon circuit is that Senate Majority Leader Curt Bramble is onboard with the Godfrey/Jenkins' neoCON eminent domain revival. We actually heard this same meme over the phone this morning, from one of our otherwise-astute Emerald City councilmembers.

Being the curious and skeptical type, we called Curt Bramble, who was happy to give us the "straight skinny."

And here's what Senator Bramble told us:

"Yes," he will support a limited return to RDA-empowered eminent domain. He said he'd even co-sponsor "the right bill," in the event that Senator Jenkins (or anybody else) can come up with something reasonably compatible with traditional American property rights concepts. He explained to us his threshold for support, and it goes like this:

1) Any new legislation would have to be aimed at correcting "true blight;" and Senator Bramble would insist on extremely strict standards.

2) He would embrace the "threshold of 'receptiveness'" concept but the numbers would conform to a 90% standard, according to these three factors common to an eminent domain target area:

Residential properties:

• The relative number of property owners;
• The relative percentage of property acreage, and;
• The relative gross fair market value of property interests.

In the case of commercial properties, he'd be willing to fall back to the 2/3 standard.

Yeah. we guess you might say that even Curt Bramble is onboard the eminent domain bandwagon -- in a VERY limited sense.

As Senator Bramble told us, he'd create a "high bar" to the use of eminent domain in the future; and we agree with him on this. Applying these standards in the real world, we think very few overly-ambitious land-grabs would succeed.

So what about it, gentle readers? Do any of you now consider Senator Bramble to be a private property rights sell-out? (We don't.)

And what about the other items on the mayor's laundry list? It would be interesting to hear our gentle readers' own analysis; and we thus open the floor for comment.