Gov. Kathy Hochul made headlines recently by announcing the FAST NY Shovel-Ready Grant Program, which promises up to $200 million to attract high-tech industry, especially semiconductor manufacturers, to New York by developing potential sites statewide. The release cites the White Pine Commerce Park in Onondaga County, which Hochul visited this year (bringing along Sen. Chuck Schumer and US Deputy Secretary of Commerce Don Graves) to tout efforts to lure a chip-maker there with huge amounts of state and federal money.
But Hochul doesn’t mention that the White Pine site she wants to offer up to the semiconductor manufacturer is far from “shovel-ready” — in fact, it’s already taken.
It’s taken by Paul and Robin Richer, who live there in a home Paul’s dad built himself in the 1950s on rural Burnet Road. And it’s taken by their neighbors, many of whom also live in the homes they grew up in as children. County officials plan to use eminent domain to take the homes in this longstanding community, bulldoze them and turn the land over to a private company.
The practice of taking private property for private economic development is deeply unpopular and un-American. Most Americans presume the government uses eminent domain solely for public uses, like building a public school or a courthouse — something the public will own and use.
But the Supreme Court’s widely reviled decision in Kelo v. City of New London held that the US Constitution does not prevent governments from taking a person’s property and giving it to another private party purely for economic development. After the decision, 44 of the 50 states put into law heightened protections against the economic development takings Kelo sanctioned.
New York, on the other hand, failed to act to protect its citizens, and so it’s seen eminent-domain abuse continue unabated.
The threat of such abuse isn’t limited to upstate neighborhoods like Burnet Road. New York has allowed the taking of its citizens’ private property for the supposedly “public purposes” of promoting private development around a Brooklyn sports stadium, expanding a private Ivy League university in Manhattan, replacing a Port Chester CVS with a Walgreens and enhancing a Long Island golf course.
These abusive, “A to B” takings are permitted only because New York’s elected officials (and its courts) didn’t act after Kelo.
The families on Burnet Road are paying for their government’s failure. The county has tried unsuccessfully for more than 20 years to lure a private company to White Pine. But it had no remorse about throwing good money after bad by trying to expand the park, even at the cost of destroying the neighborhood along Burnet Road.
Even if Paul and Robin save their home and defeat the county’s bid to use eminent domain, Onondaga will still have destroyed much of Burnet Road. It’s intimidated some Burnet Road residents to leave their homes behind, and it’s largely allowed those properties to fall into disrepair. And if the county’s bid to use eminent domain succeeds, it will certainly destroy a neighborhood and homes that have stood for more than a century to expand the park.
But then what? The county’s only immediate gain is land that can only be “improved” by the FAST NY grants and, even then, only offered to a semiconductor manufacturer. The rest is out of its hands: Officials can’t promise that the manufacturer will choose White Pine over competing sites, like those in Arizona, Ohio and Texas, where new semiconductor plants were recently announced.
Anyone who doubts that the county is sacrificing very real homes for a mere “long shot” should consider Kelo. Just as Hochul has, the government officials in Kelo promised eminent domain would result in economic revitalization and thousands of jobs. But today, more than 15 years after the Kelo decision, the undeveloped property is merely a home for feral animals.
Hochul has promised to roll out the red carpet to a “shovel-ready” site for a semiconductor company — but it’s actually just a carpet that leads to somebody else’s home.
Bob Belden is an attorney at the Institute for Justice.
https://nypost.com/2022/03/09/hochul-offers-shovel-ready-land-to-biz-with-families-living-there/
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