Waterbury Republican-American Editorial

December 27, 2016

Eminent-domain lawsuit
Redefining ‘facilities’

(Waterbury Republican-American Editorial)

When government officials want to push aside a private-sector competitor, all they have to do is compel taxpayers to underwrite their operating costs.

Unable to dun taxpayers under penalty of law, the competitors simply fade away.

Happens all the time.

But that wasn’t good enough for Connecticut’s mass-transit zealots, who revealed their doubts about the prospects of their CTfastrak system by wielding the enormous power of eminent domain against four bus companies operating in CTfastrak’s neighborhood.

Clever officials redefined the term “facilities” in eminent-domain law to include licenses to do business, then confiscated those “facilities,” i.e. licenses.

As almost anyone knows and everyone should know, a “facility” typically is a building, or a place where equipment is stored or serviced.

Under Justice Peter T. Zarella’s majority opinion, the state Supreme Court decided 4-2 that the statute cited by the state Department of Transportation did not authorize the taking of intangible operating rights by means of condemnation.

A lower court will decide what relief the companies – Dattco Inc., Collins Bus Service Inc., Nason Partners and New Britain Transportation Co. – will receive.

The DOT’s taking of the bus companies’ licenses came 10 years after the notorious Fort Trumbull case, in which New London took homes by eminent domain to facilitate construction of a complex that would generate more tax revenues than the single-family homes in the Fort Trumbull neighborhood.

The Supreme Court later sided with New London, but the project never took shape, the property still is vacant, and Connecticut state and municipal governments’ reputation for ethics, competence and respect for property rights remains in tatters.

As Sen. Joseph C. Markley, R-16th District, wrote in a February 2015 op-ed in the Republican-American concerning the DOT’s actions, “The power of government to seize private property for public use treads on the sensibilities of every freedom-loving American. Government should use eminent domain only when it is completely necessary, and then, only within rigid legal boundaries. … This disturbingly broad interpretation of eminent domain blazes a dangerous path, threatening our right to be secure in our possessions.”

Having shattered the state’s reputation in the New London case and suffered an ignominious defeat in the CTfastrak caper, Connecticut state and municipal leaders should think long and hard before seeking to use eminent domain against their own citizens.