Columnist Jeff German: Petitioning for rights of ‘little guy’

Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2005 | 10:58 a.m.

For nearly a decade Don Chairez has taken a stand against allowing local governments to seize property from one private entity and give it to another in the name of redevelopment.

In the next couple of weeks the 49-year-old Las Vegas lawyer expects to turn up the volume of his opposition when he launches a statewide petition drive to change Nevada's constitution to ban what he calls an abusive form of eminent domain.

It will be a push for a "property owners' bill of rights," and it will be Nevada's answer to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June that gave local governments the power to do what Chairez abhors.

And Chairez will not be alone.

The 5-4 ruling has created a backlash across the country and spurred state legislatures and Congress into action. Conservatives and liberals are upset with the decision.

The high court found that the city of New London, Conn., was justified in razing the homes of several residents to make way for a private commercial development that was supposed to revitalize the city's waterfront.

"The Supreme Court ruling favors those who have lots of money and political clout over the little guy," Chairez says. "We're just trying to level the playing field."

Chairez, a former district judge who has run for Congress and the Nevada Supreme Court, is looking to gather enough signatures to qualify the petition drive for the 2006 ballot here. For the measure to take effect, the voters will have to approve it in 2006 and 2008.

The campaign, Chairez says, already is attracting the interest of national property rights groups, which have promised to pour money and resources into it.

The growing uproar over the Supreme Court ruling, Chairez explains, has potential to make eminent domain a big issue in 2006, which means Chairez is counting on plenty of support.

It's an issue he takes personally.

As a district judge, Chairez shook up the establishment in 1996 when he ruled that the Las Vegas Downtown Redevelopment Agency had wrongly used eminent domain to take land from the Pappas family and give it to the Fremont Street Experience.

The small, but valuable, parcel was turned into a parking lot for the Fremont Street Experience, a glitzy pedestrian mall run by a private consortium of 10 downtown casinos.

Ultimately, however, the Nevada Supreme Court overturned Chairez and, as in the later New London case, found that the taking of the Pappas land was for the public's greater good, even though it went into the hands of another private entity.

The Pappas family ended its epic legal battle with the city last year after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear its appeal. The family accepted $4.5 million for the land, which was far less than the $7 million it had been seeking.

But the family's fight against eminent domain abuse lives on through Chairez.

"We want to show the Nevada Supreme Court and the city of Las Vegas that they were essentially stepping on the property rights of people," Chairez says.

"We want to prove that the positions we took 10 years ago were right."