Welcome to the Future!
The Candidate: Ohio Governor candidate Dennis Kucinich (D)
The eminent domain use: The City of Massillon, Ohio should use eminent domain to keep the Affinity Medical Center open
The public uses: a hospital & 800 jobs
The Patch | One Town In Northeast Ohio Could Lose 800 Jobs In March
Wilmington, DE Mayor Mike Purzcki proposed to eliminate blight by:
The opposition killed it by:
What solution did opponents want? Protections in ordinance that limit the ability to take owner occuppied homes and to prohibit takings for minor violations.
The city: Charlestown Indiana
The code enforcement fines: Code enforcement violations began in the summer of 2016, after city council adopted fines that cannot be waived
The alleged goal of city leaders: revitalization
The court’s response to the code fines:
The City: Littleton, CO & Wheat Ridge, CO
The voter approval requirement: To access urban renewal tools like tax increment financing or eminent domain require urban renewal
What did a district court in Colorado do with Wheat Ridge’s Ordinance? The Wheat Ridge ordinance, related to mandating that any tax-increment financing package over $2.5 million first get the consent of voters, is pre-empted by Colorado’s supremacy on the issue.
What’s the city’s argument: voter approval will cost time…
In Tennessee, the Jefferson County Economic Development Oversight Committee, a group of elected officials, recommended spending tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer money to begin development on an industrial megasite.
Word spread that the Jefferson County Economic Development Oversight Committee was talking about using eminent domain to acquire land for the industrial megasite.
Open Records requests followed. A Tennessee appeals court ruled this week that open records laws applied…
Rhode Island has a stadium to build for its Pawtucket Red Sox.
What did the Senate Finance Chair say in response to this hoopla? “public opinion is not going to be the litmus test”
Large portions of city of Highland, Illinois is blighted, which translates to the city will create 3 business districts.
The economic benefit of the 3 business districts will be:
A blight study determined portions of “downtown” Muskogee, OKlahoma are blighted. The sstudy was requested by the city as a means to trigger economic development tools for redevelopment.
The local paper supports th fidning of blight in downtown.
Muskogee Phoenix | EDITORIALLY SPEAKING: ‘Blight’ study critical to downtown
The alleged crimes: “fraud by getting inside information from the Texas Department of Transportation to buy cheap land alongside Interstate 35E and then flip it to the state at inflated prices”
How was the land value increased? land underdevelopment was considered to be a higher value
The “profit” generated by these sales to TXDOT? $12.6Million
What’s happening in Georgia?
Atlanta Constitution Journal | Watchdog: Georgia bill lets cities take blighted land for developers