From Philly.com

For years, school-choice advocates in New Jersey have pushed for public school students to be allowed to attend private schools through voucherlike programs.

With Gov. Christie now in office, those advocates have their best chance in recent years, although they still face a considerable battle against those who say such programs would hurt the public schools and the students left behind. Christie supports this legislation, according to his spokesman.

State Sen. Raymond Lesniak (D., Union) and Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean Jr. (R., Union) are proposing a five-year pilot program, roughly modeled on a similar program in Pennsylvania, under which low-income students in “chronically failing” public schools would be able to apply for scholarships to attend private schools, including parochial schools, or other public schools. The scholarships would be funded by private corporations, who would in turn receive dollar-for-dollar tax credits.

The program, which has been proposed for introduction in the Legislature, defines chronically failing public schools as those where, for the past two years, 40 percent or more of students scored “partially proficient” – the lowest score possible – in both language arts and math, or 65 percent or more of students scored partially proficient in either subject.

Two hundred and five public schools statewide (including charter schools) – or 8 percent – meet the criteria, including 24 in Camden, 42 in Newark, and 25 in Paterson. A handful of schools in Burlington and Gloucester Counties also meet the criteria.

The bill also would establish a competitive grant process, through which any of the so-called chronically failing public schools could compete for grants funded by the state.

Lesniak said the bill would “reduce class sizes, provide more choices to students in the state’s lowest-performing schools, and spur the innovation necessary to turn around these same schools.”

Kean, who has sponsored similar legislation in recent years, said the Opportunity Scholarship Act would “help ensure that more children in the state have the fullest opportunity to achieve their full potential.”

The Lesniak-Kean bill has the support of an unusual combination of Republicans and Democrats. Among its supporters is Excellent Education for Everyone (E3), a school-choice advocacy group cofounded by Newark Mayor Cory Booker, as well as Rev. Reginald Jackson, executive director of the influential Black Ministers’ Council of New Jersey.

“This bill will expand school choice for kids in our worst schools,” said Derrell Bradford, executive director of E3. “It will spur innovation in low-performing schools and it will save some money.”

But opponents argue the proposal is nothing more than a backdoor voucher program.

Sen. Shirley Turner (D., Mercer), who as chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee has blocked previous versions of the bill, said the state cannot afford to give up any more revenue at a time when it is already struggling to pay its bills.

“It looks like a duck, walks like a duck, it quacks like a duck. It’s a duck,” Turner said. “Instead of trying to help improve the public schools, this is going to help them to deteriorate even further.”

Among the local school districts that stand to lose students – and state aid – if the legislation is passed is Camden.

“Generally speaking, my question is: How does this help the public schools become better?” said Camden school board member Jose Delgado. “I think the legislators and all of us should be talking about issues related to enhancing public schools, not providing a lifeline to a small minority of students.”

Delgado said the district was receiving $15 million less in state funding because of charter schools, and that this legislation would direct even more state aid out of the public schools.

He also objects to public money being used to support religious institutions.

“Where would that money usually go? It’s money that’s not going to the public coffers. You’re intercepting it before it gets there,” he said. “It’s a nice technique, but it doesn’t really hold water with me.”

The New Jersey Education Association takes a similar position on the legislation.

“We’re still opposed to vouchers and this is a voucher bill,” said NJEA spokesman Steve Baker. “These are taxpayer-subsidized vouchers for public schools.”

Under the legislation, the contributions for scholarships would be capped at $24 million in the first year of the pilot program, increasing to $120 million in the fifth year.

Lesniak said the bill will go through the Senate Economic Growth Committee, which he chairs.

He says the program would save taxpayers money because it would help keep private schools open.

“In the past 10 years, 40,000 nonpublic school students have returned to the public school system as a result of parochial school closings, costing New Jersey taxpayers in the neighborhood of $400 to $800 million in the current fiscal year,” Lesniak said.

He said that in one year, the pilot program would save an estimated $40-$80 million.

“But the tax dollars saved are not what drives this legislation,” Lesniak said. “It’s the opportunity for a quality education that the children from poor families are not getting from the chronically failing schools they currently must attend that is its raison d’être.”

From Fox News

Politicians are staying in Congress longer and longer, but in an election year with a noticeably anti-incumbent mood, some Washington outsiders are challenging the idea of making a career out of public service.

WASHINGTON — Politicians are staying in Congress longer and longer, but in an election year with a noticeably anti-incumbent mood, some Washington outsiders are challenging the idea of making a career out of public service.

“We need folks coming in from the outside who have paid taxes and created jobs and lived under the regulations that these career politicians have created,” said Jim Rutledge, a Republican attorney running to unseat Maryland Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski, who has 33 years in Congress between the House and Senate.

Rutledge is typical of the outsiders running this year, who know statistics are not in their favor.

Between 1789 and 2002, 13.9 percent of House members and 21.9 percent of senators served 12 years or more, according to the Congressional Research Service.

In today’s Congress, 42.9 percent of House members and 45 percent of senators have been in office for 12 years or more, according to data compiled by the authors of the textbook “Congress and Its Members.”

Term limits supporters, who think 12 years in Congress is plenty, say those numbers have an easy explanation.

“The powers of incumbency in this country are so great that it is nearly impossible to unseat an incumbent, barring death, indictment, scandal or retirement,” said Philip Blumel, a Florida financial planner and president of the advocacy group U.S. Term Limits.

In 2008, 94 percent of incumbents were re-elected to the House and 83 percent were re-elected to the Senate, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Term-limits advocates argue that limiting lawmakers’ time in office would help clean up some of Washington’s worst practices and rejuvenate a democratic process gone stagnant with incumbency. The basic argument is this: Open seats draw the most attention, resources and debate, so why not build them into the system by forcing people to leave office after they’ve done their time?

Curtis Gans, the director of the Center for the Study of the American Electorate at American University, said term limits are a terrible idea because they take power away from the people. In a term-limited legislature, Gans said, power would fall to unelected staff and lobbyists who would keep their jobs while elected officials rotated out.

Term limits would also restrict people with the most experience and ability from serving in Congress and would contribute to the election of extreme, polarizing candidates, Gans said.

“Incumbents ought to get the benefit of the doubt if they perform honorably,” said Gans. “If they’re not incompetent, they ought to be staying in office.”

U.S. Term Limits’ Blumel said that some Republicans are embracing term limits simply because their party isn’t currently in control or they’re newcomers running for office for the first time, but popular support for the issue doesn’t fall along party lines.

“It’s really not so much a left-right issue as it is a people versus power issue,” said Blumel.

The Tea Party movement, made up of protest groups rooted in anti-Washington sentiment, has been quick to take up the term limits banner. At a recent rally outside freshman Maryland Democratic Rep. Frank Kratovil’s Bel Air office, signs calling for term limits mixed among the health care reform complaints.

“Once they get in there, they get in the system and all they think about is getting re-elected,” said Mike Trott, a Tea Party activist from Harford County.

While the emergence of the Tea Party movement has breathed new life into the issue, calls for term limits from the campaign trail aren’t new.

They were promised as part of Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America in 1994, but a law requiring them never gained traction and the issue eventually faded from national prominence. But in an election year already drawing parallels to 1994, Blumel is hoping that term limits might be coming back around.

“There’s a big interest in it right now. There’s a big anti-incumbent mood,” said Blumel. “If the Congress was truly representative, we’d already have this done.”

from Yall Politics

Farm Bureau launches Eminent Domain Reform petition drive

After several attempts to get an eminent domain reform bill passed in the legislature, the Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation (MFBF) is now taking the issue to the people of Mississippi.

“For three years, Farm Bureau has urged legislators to protect homeowners and landowners from confiscation of their private property by eminent domain, but to no avail,” said MFBF President David Waide. “The 2009 Legislature passed H.B. 803, which prohibited the taking of private property under the guise of economic development for private development or business. Both House and Senate passed the bill, but the Governor vetoed it.”

Now, Farm Bureau has launched a petition drive to put this initiative on the November 2011 ballot. If this initiative passes, it will greatly discourage government entities from taking private property for economic development purposes by prohibiting its use for those purposes for ten years.

Waide urges citizens to sign the petition. “Anyone can go to a county Farm Bureau office and sign the petition or go to the SavingMyLand Web site (http://www.savingmyland.org), print out a petition and sign it,” he said. “There is also a petition in the latest edition of Mississippi Farm Country magazine.”

In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court held in a 5-4 decision in Kelo v. City of New London that a Connecticut city could take away people’s homes and turn the property over to a private party to develop the property for its own profit. The Court justified this result because the increased tax revenue on the developed property would benefit the public and the use of the property was, therefore, a public use.

Farm Bureau and many others disagree with this decision. “Just because a big company or a developer has the wealth to build a hotel or office building on the property that will generate more revenue does not justify the government’s taking the property from the owner and turning it over to a wealthier party,” Waide said. “Constitutional rights should not be determined by financial standards, or favor the wealthy over others.”

For more information about this initiative or to sign the petition, visit your county Farm Bureau office, go to http://www.savingmyland.org, or sign the petition in the March edition of Mississippi Farm Country.

Farm Bureau Press Release

3/18/10

From Colorado Daily

As the Regional Transportation District’s FasTracks program begins to materialize, RTD is colluding with several Denver-area urban renewal entities to redevelop areas around new and existing light rail stations. Taxpayers and property owners should beware.

Eminent domain enables governments and agencies to take land for public use. In recent years, private property rights have been undermined by the corruption of the term “public use” to include private redevelopment when that property could serve a perceived public benefit.

Public benefit is a flexible concept often interpreted to mean an increase in tax revenues in a redeveloped area.

Urban renewal aims to rid a neighborhood of “blight” (some states refer to the condition as “slum”). An examination of the Colorado Revised Statutes reveals that new Transit-Oriented Developments (TODs) and other urban renewal projects may themselves be blighted areas, according to state law.

To be “blighted,” an area must meet five of 11 provisions outlined by statute. The conditions that must be present include a predominance of defective or inadequate street layout; faulty lot layout in relation to size, adequacy, accessibility or usefulness; or the existence of conditions that endanger life or property, by fire or other causes.

In addition, statutory blight includes environmental contamination of buildings or property; the existence of health, safety, or welfare factors requiring high levels of municipal services or substantial physical underutilization or vacancy of sites, buildings, or other improvements; and any condition that impairs sound growth of municipality, retards the provisions of housing accommodations, or constitutes an economic or social liability.

Most of the proposed areas of TOD include plans for high-density living spaces and retail shopping spaces. Despite construction of these developments around light rail transit, the number of cars will increase on those redeveloped streets and on nearby arteries, as people drive to and park near the stations, and residents move in and park their own cars. Environmental contamination as a result will include diminished views, significant noise pollution and higher commuter traffic pollution.

These new developments also put a great strain on police and fire services. Redeveloped areas increase the burden on service districts, but decrease the funding for those services, as many of these projects rely on highly flawed subsidy-based funding mechanisms like tax-increment financing. This creates an alarming public safety concern since most of the housing will be high- and medium-density.

In troubled economic times, retail vacancy rates (and residential vacancies) are high, constituting an underutilization of these spaces. High vacancy places developers, owners and tenants under pressure. Underutilization is dangerous because of the lost tax revenue necessary to fund services to the project areas, if those owners and their tenants cannot keep up with the tax burden. Underutilization constitutes an economic liability, which impairs the healthy, organic and market-driven growth of a municipality.

For all of these reasons, TODs should be recognized as blighted areas. RTD, local governments, and especially citizens, would be wise to reexamine urban renewal plans, especially government subsidized urban renewal based on unjust eminent domain practices, to determine how best to improve blighted sights, and to ensure that redevelopment decreases, rather than increases, blight.

When TODs attract businesses and residents, traffic, congestion, noise, protection burden and blight will increase. If they don’t attract new tenants, these areas will fail economically and need to be “redeveloped” again in a few more years. Citizens should be on their guard to ensure that massive taxpayer subsidies to TODs do not create more blight than previously existed.

Read more: http://www.coloradodaily.com/ci_14726434?source=most_viewed#ixzz0j1n2h3xT
Coloradodaily.com

From TheAuburn Pub

Though officials with the Auburn Industrial Development Authority have yet to release specifics about today’s meeting on a downtown hotel, eminent domain is emerging as a possibility in the project.
Multiple property owners at the State Street site say they were approached almost two years ago by a private developer interested in buying their land.

As the property owners showed reservations toward selling, Pioneer Companies looked to AIDA for help.

One AIDA official says the authority’s goal is to get the residents reasonable compensation for the multiple properties located at the site proposed for the hotel.

But for people like Renee and Doug Ward, there is more to the value of their property than an appraisal.

The Wards purchased the small building on the corner of State and Water streets in the summer of 2007 for Renee’s dog grooming business.

After about six months of their own labor and a complete overhaul of the structure, they relocated Wag’in Tail to what they call the “perfect” location. Renee Ward no longer had to deal with paying rent.

The parking at the new space was off the street, and customers became accustomed to the new spot.

The clean, cheerful space has an almost calming effect on her while she works, she said.

“I’m very happy … happier than I’ve ever been in my career,” said Renee, who has been grooming dogs for more than 16 years.

They’re not trying to stop the progress of downtown development, Doug said. But what if they sell and the project never comes together? And if they are forced out, what can compensate for the money and time they’ve put into that space, Doug asked.

“I certainly don’t want to try and get rich on that little corner,” he said. “But what it comes right down to is the business she runs is very, very comfortable there.”

Mike Kazanivsky had a shorter, albeit straightforward, explanation Tuesday when asked about his Water Street property.

“It’s not for sale,” Kazanivsky said while clearing roots by hand on the empty lot nestled in a corner between the Owasco River and the Arterial.

Kazanivsky said he didn’t want to say anything more about the issue at this point, though he confirmed he is in the same situation as the Wards and the New Shanghai restaurant next door.

The former T & K Hardware store situated in the middle of the other three is the only property currently under contract with the developer.

According to Pioneer Companies, the plan is an 88-room hotel, restaurant and conference center on the block of State Street between Arterial East and Arterial West.

AIDA chair Jim Dacey said Tuesday that the authority’s main goal is to get the business owners in that area to work with them. Dacey said developers and AIDA will make a “reasonable presentation” to the property owners on Thursday.

“Why would anyone want to be adversarial?” he said. “It’s not good business or a good neighbor thing to do.”

But Dacey also said the specifics of that presentation will wait until the 3:30 p.m. meeting. When asked why the information will not be made public before this afternoon, he said it was at the developer’s request.

“There is no desire to have it (in the) public before that,” Dacey said.

Representatives with Pioneer Companies could not be reached for comment Tuesday evening.

Doug Ward said he has a positive outlook on the situation, even if AIDA moves forward with eminent domain. City representatives have already reached out, he said, going as far as to offer help finding a new location if it comes to that.

Ward said he foresees the city serving a role similar to that of an arbitrator, trying to make everyone as happy as possible.

But it’s still a difficult issue, he said. The last thing they want to do is give up on something that has become an “integral part” of their lives.

“I just think this thing can be resolved in a good, positive way for everybody.” Ward said.

Staff writer Christopher Caskey can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 282 or christopher.caskey@lee.net.