Hmmm

Here's a poser, or at least it is for me. On Thursday, the House of Representatives voted by a margin of 231-189 to bar federal transportation funds from being used to make improvements on lands seized through eminent domain for private development.

Voting to bar the use of funds were 39 Democrats and 192 Republicans; voting against the ban were 157 Democrats, 31 Republicans and 1 Independent. Fifteen members did not vote.

This would have been a tough call for me assuming that the resolution is exactly as stated above, that is, there were no extra details not mentioned in news accounts. As I expect was clear from my post on the matter, I opposed the Supreme Court's decision to allow a very wide interpretation of the Fifth Amendment's "takings" clause, an interpretation under which a municipality's hope for increased tax revenue in the future becomes proper justification for imposing eminent domain and passing on the property to a private, profit-seeking enterprise. That, I maintain, goes beyond any reasonable interpretation of the "public use" allowance for seizures of property permitted by the Constitution.

The measure the House passed, it would appear, intends to say "well, you can do it, but we don't have to help you." For that reason, I could be expected to support it - as, indeed, did some good Democrat liberals such as Maxine Waters (CA), John Conyers (MI), Frank Pallone (NJ), and Sheila Jackson-Lee (TX).

At the same time, I have real reservations about it for a reason that overlaps my concern about the Supreme Court decision: It's a sweeping declaration that could threaten projects of which I would approve. Suppose, just for example, a city wanted to seize some run-down buildings, even a blighted neighborhood - and here I mean truly blighted, blighted the way we think of a neighborhood when we say it's blighted, not the semantically-"blighted" areas that have figured in some cases - and turn the land over to a private developer who planned to erect low-income housing. Would I oppose that? Depending on the particulars, I might - but I might not. Yet because the amendment passed speaks only of "private development," its ban would apply. If the bill could have been drawn a little tighter so as not to strike out private development per se but only that in which the public gain comes not from the project itself (e.g., low-income housing) but from a hoped-for effect of the project (e.g., increased revenue), I'd certainly have supported it were I in Congress.

Admittedly, making that kind of legal distinction might well have been pretty tricky. Still, I suppose it doesn't really matter: I wonder just how significant federal transportation funds are in the financing of affected projects. Since I suspect the answer is "not very," which would make the vote far more symbolic, an expression of protest, than anything that would risk screwing up something I might support in the future, I expect I would have been with the majority on this.

Damn. Agreeing with conservatives again. This is getting creepy.