PISTOL still pointed at many projects

Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2006 | 7:22 a.m.

The scaled-back version of Nevada's eminent domain initiative could cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars and undermine the ability of local governments to keep pace with the valley's booming growth, the measure's leading opponents charged Monday.

If voters approved the ballot measure, opponents warned, big freeway widening projects in Southern Nevada, such as those along Interstate 15, U.S 95 and the Las Vegas Beltway, could be jeopardized because of lengthy political and legal delays, lost federal funding and massive additional construction costs picked up by taxpayers.

"The taxpayers are going to pay through the nose," said Clark County Commissioner Bruce Woodbury, who heads the Regional Transportation Commission. "We'll be facing gridlock in this community because we won't be able to keep up with growth."

Phillip Peckman, a Greenspun Corporation executive who heads a state task force evaluating Nevada's overburdened highway demands, added, "If this gets passed, I don't think we'll be able to build any roads at all. It's going to add such a significant increase to road construction." (The Greenspun family owns the Las Vegas Sun.)

Woodbury, a 25-year veteran of the County Commission, said he was pleased that the Nevada Supreme Court last week removed the most reckless provision of the ballot initiative. That provision said property owners were entitled to "just compensation" for any government action that changed the value of their property. That would have wreaked havoc on the local zoning system that regulates the valley's fast-paced development.

"We dodged a bullet on that one," Woodbury said. "But all of the harmful provisions relating to our public works projects are still there."

What worries Woodbury is a provision that would require property taken by eminent domain - the process by which government may buy private land for public projects - to be offered back, at the original purchase price, to its original owner if the property is not used within five years.

That practice, Woodbury said, would conflict with federal regulations, which require fair market value to be paid for the disposal of such property. Federal authorities have informed Nevada officials that the state risks losing $210 million a year in federal highway funding if the initiative became law, Woodbury said.

The provision also would make it difficult for the government to save the taxpayers money by buying property for future roads at current prices.

"This is an initiative that handcuffs anyone who wants to get public works infrastructure in place," said Jacob Snow, RTC general manager. "It makes it difficult for us to do our job and deliver to the public."

Two other key provisions - one that requires the government to pay the highest potential price for land taken through eminent domain and another that says the property owner can't be held liable for attorneys fees in any legal action - also would drive up the cost of public works projects on the backs of the taxpayers, opponents said.

The initiative, Question 2 on the Nov. 7 ballot, is being funded by the People's Initiative to Stop the Taking of Our Land, or PISTOL. Most of the group's money has come from Americans for Limited Government, a Chicago-based libertarian organization headed by New York real estate mogul Howie Rich.

Las Vegas eminent domain lawyer Kermitt Waters, the state campaign's driving, bristled Monday at the suggestion that the proposed constitutional amendment would stunt community growth or lead to governmental gridlock.

"That is the most disingenuous statement coming from bureaucrats," Waters said. "There is nothing in our initiative that will keep legitimate projects from going forward. What it will stop are the illegitimate projects."

Initiative co-author Don Chairez, a former District Court judge who is the Republican candidate for attorney general, acknowledged that the ballot measure could cause taxpayers to spend more money in eminent domain cases but not as much as the "hundreds of millions of dollars" claimed by the measure's opponents.

Most eminent domain cases, Chairez said, involve land nowhere near areas of prime real estate such as the Strip.

But other critics charged that the initiative would do little but pad the pocketbooks of lawyers like Waters.

"The bottom line here is that the trial lawyers and very few property owners would hit the jackpot at the expense of the taxpayers and the other 99.9 percent of the property owners in this state," he said.