Editorial: Change, but without chaos

Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2006 | 7:17 a.m.

A local attorney with a vested interest and an out-of-state agitator with an attitude toward government are behind a ballot question that would wreak havoc on land-use planning in Nevada.

The Clark County Commission, and in particular, Commissioner Bruce Woodbury, has taken a strong stand against the question - a stand we fully support. On Tuesday the commission will discuss sensible alternatives to the question, which is misleadingly known as the People's Initiative to Stop the Taking of Our Land.

Ostensibly, the question is aimed at stopping government at all levels in Nevada, by way of a constitutional amendment, from using eminent domain procedures to take property from one private owner and give it to another private owner for the sake of enhancing tax revenues.

But the 14-section question veers far afield from the principle that unwilling property owners should not have their lands seized for private ventures. If passed, the question would also subject legitimate government land-use planning to so many strictures and so much court action that everything from neighborhood zoning to highway planning would either be stopped cold or become so expensive that taxes would skyrocket.

A high-profile local case from the 1990s, involving the condemnation of private property in downtown Las Vegas to make way for the Fremont Street Experience attraction that benefits private hotels, is still fresh in the minds of local voters. And a U.S. Supreme Court decision last year, affirming the right of a Connecticut city to do essentially the same thing, renewed popular opposition to the practice.

Kermitt Waters, a local attorney whose specialized practice in eminent domain cases would grow if the question were passed, and Howard Rich, a real estate millionaire out of New York City who heads a Chicago-based libertarian outfit, used the local and national cases in their petition drive to get the question on the November ballot.

At Tuesday's County Commission meeting, proposals to ban the county redevelopment agency from using eminent domain over the protest of a private landowner, and to establish a policy to use eminent domain only for public projects, will be discussed. We support these proposals because, unlike the ballot question, they straightforwardly address the single issue of eminent domain.