From The Sun Chronicle

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NORTON – Voters demanded answers Wednesday night after water-sewer commissioners and state Rep. Jay Barrows said Norton was working on a “friendly eminent domain” deal for Pine Street land for wastewater disposal – which the landowner disputed.

As a result, voters rejected the commission’s town meeting request to allow it to acquire by friendly eminent domain two sites: the Reilly property on Pine Street and the Kok property at 125 Crane St.

Both sites are near the Mansfield wastewater treatment plant, which is in Norton but serves both towns and Foxboro, said Barrows, R-Mansfield.

Mansfield voters agreed this spring to borrow up to $1.75 million to acquire the land, he said. The three towns will share in the actual cost through their inter-municipal sewer agreement.

Barrows said the land deals would be friendly eminent domain takings, giving the seller a tax benefit. But Francis Reilly, who owns the Pine Street site, opposes the taking of his land, which he said his family has owned since 1765.

Reilly said the wastewater disposal use would affect the groundwater there, and lower property values on Pine Street.

“There’s no reason why they can’t find another place where it’s industrial and it’s not going to affect the other landowners, plus ourselves,” Reilly said.

Reilly’s comments surprised Barrows, Water-Sewer Commissioner Alec Rich III, and the voters.

“With all due respect, Mr. Representative, this doesn’t sound like a friendly taking,” resident Joe Norton said.

Barrows replied: “Five to 10 minutes ago, I thought it was a friendly taking, too.” Finance committee member Michael Thomas said, “I want to know why we were led to believe this was a friendly taking.”

Selectmen Chairman Robert Kimball Jr. said that “we’re all a bit surprised by this.”

From My South End

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Massachusetts is one of a handful of states that has taken no action to restrain eminent domain-the government’s ability to seize property rights with due monetary compensation but without the owner’s consent-after the Supreme Court’s 2005 Kelo decision finding eminent domain for private use constitutional. It seems self-evident that forcibly taking property from one owner and giving it to another for financial gain is unfair-even un-American; yet, our legislature seems reluctant to take up the Court’s suggestion that states may enact their own restrictions. The reason is a lingering-but mistaken-belief that eminent domain is an indispensable tool for economic development and tax base enhancement.

But the opposite is true. The evidence has been clear since 1964, when Martin Anderson, then with MIT/Harvard’s Joint Center for Urban Studies, published a book titled The Federal Bulldozer, an analysis of the economic impacts of eminent domain as used in urban renewal. He provided clear documentation that in the years since private-benefit eminent domain became government policy in 1949, it had cost the taxpayers hugely more than it produced, and boded to remain a liability for the foreseeable future. Indeed, Boston is today still pock-marked with several hundred acres of land taken, cleared and held tax-exempt by the Boston Redevelopment Authority, land where people and businesses would have supported vibrant community life and paid taxes for these forty or fifty years. Eminent domain drove out residents, broke up communities, and decimated the small-business base.

In 2008, a Wall Street Journal editorial discussed a study by a private organization, Institute for Justice, which found no discernable hindrance to economic activity from the restriction of eminent domain, even in states implementing the strongest reforms after Kelo. The Journal agreed with the report, noting that although developers like to get land the government forces sellers to give up at cheap prices, and politicians like to play power games picking winners and losers, projects that can’t stand on their own shouldn’t be propped up by the taxpayers.

In 2009, William J. Stern, who ran the New York State Urban Development Corporation’s Times Square redevelopment project, wrote a report revealing that eminent domain “delayed development, added tremendous cost, and was unfair and inefficient”-and fraught with corruption.

It’s only logical that eminent domain-like other unfair public subsidies-would have negative effects. First, this kind of government intervention props up bad business plans and encourages overblown, risky projects that would be weeded out by the private markets, often leaving the city to clean up a big mess. Aside from the empty lots scarring the city, Filenes, Columbus Center and North Point are three recent grandiose local plans that were given all sorts of land, regulatory and tax favors, only to collapse of their own overreaching weight. Pfizer, the corporation for which the City of New London seized and destroyed Suzette Kelo’s home and neighborhood, recently decided “nevermind,” and moved out of town altogether, showing again, as the Wall Street Journal reported, “the futility of eminent domain as corporate welfare.” Read Nicole Gelinas’s City Journal story of the Atlantic Yards project in New York, where decay and disinvestment are the result of “a half-decade’s worth of government-created uncertainty, which stopped genuine private investment in its tracks.” We started to see tenants leaving and building maintenance neglected in the Fenway ten years ago, when a large swath of the neighborhood was declared blighted (or “potentially” blighted!) because the Red Sox team owners wanted to relocate the ballpark and fill its current site with profitable towers. Eminent domain costs the taxpayers money up front in takings compensation, and then for unpredictable periods of time in the loss of taxpaying properties. It destroys organically evolved communities and tries to replace them wholesale with artificial aggregates of buildings and people that don’t fit into the context and lack the interstitial tissue to function cohesively. And it end-runs the competitive markets, putting decisions into the hands of politicians with short-term political and financial goals, and engenders corruption, cronyism, and influence-peddling. Eminent domain is bad government and bad business.

As the WSJ reminds us, private development went along very nicely for centuries before politicians decided to take property from one person for the benefit of another. As Stern learned from his Times Square experience, “There was no shortage of developers willing to acquire property the old-fashioned way-through the private market.”

In today’s climate of economic distress, politicians are especially vulnerable to the fear-mongering lobbyists’s argument that we mustn’t lose any tool that could stimulate the economy. But the facts on eminent domain should liberate our elected officials to do the right thing-if that’s what they want to do. They should act now to eliminate private-benefit eminent domain, both by legislation and by constitutional amendment, to get government out of the business of business, let the competitive market determine development, and use scarce public money for real public needs.

The Judiciary Committee just heard several bills that would prohibit eminent domain for other than the traditional public uses-schools, parks, roads, etc. House Bill 1778 in particular serves the purpose well: it contains no “blight” loopholes, and would also prevent eminent domain taking of public land for private use.

Write to your legislators before March 17, the Committee decision date, and tell them to pass H. 1778. More important, tell them to pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting private-use eminent domain at the Constitutional Convention scheduled for July 29. Without this amendment, each politically wired developer will simply get a new law passed that allows for a taking s/he wants, “notwithstanding any other laws to the contrary.”

The last word, again from the Wall Street Journal: “If there is a lesson from Connecticut’s misfortune, it is that economic development that relies on the strong arm of government will never be the kind to create sustainable growth.”

Shirley Kressel is a landscape architect and urban designer, and one of the founders of the Alliance of Boston Neighborhoods. She can be reached at Shirley.Kressel@verizon.net.

From The Cape Cod Times

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I applaud the proposal of state representatives Jeffrey Perry and Karyn Polito (”Action sought on term limits,” Sept. 1) to have a constitutional amendment to impose a mandatory 12-year lifetime term limit on all Massachusetts state legislators. This is long overdue.

Yet just as necessary is the need to carry this proposal to the national level — the U.S. Congress. Despite the abrupt dismissal of such thinking by members of Congress, it will become ever more desirable in the eyes of the citizenry.

Mr. Perry and Ms. Polito have it absolutely correct: More than 12 years of public service quickly degenerates into self-service.

Edward A. Blomdahl

Centerville

From Wicked Local Plymouth

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PLYMOUTH — When residents volunteer and are appointed to a board or committee, should their service have a shelf life?

Selectmen are divided on the subject, but a majority appear to favor term limits for appointed committee members.

The discussion prompted a proposed amendment to the town’s charter that would clearly define the selectmen’s authority to remove appointed committee and board members.

Monday, Acting Town Manager Melissa Arrighi said she’s working on the language of an amendment to be submitted to the fall Town Meeting.

Selectmen Chairman Dicky Quintal broached the subject of term limits last week in response to repeated complaints he says he’s received regarding some veteran committee members.

While Quintal didn’t reveal the targets of the complaints, he said it’s clear that committee appointments should carry term limits. One veteran committee member has racked up 50 complaints, according to Quintal.

But Selectman David Malaguti says setting term limits and removong a committee member are two separate issues.

Airport Commissioner Walter Morrison has served wonderfully on the Airport Commission for decades, Malaguti said, and this veteran’s wisdom and knowledge would be sorely missed should selectmen institute term limits.

“Walter was instrumental in getting the airport self-sufficient,” Malaguti said. “Don’t make this decision frivolously. I think you’re sacrificing a lot of good people. If they’re doing a good job, they should stay on the committee. I will vote against term limits.”

Precinct 7 Rep. Ken Buechs noted that many committees have empty seats because not enough Plymouth residents have the time or are willing to spend their time volunteering on town boards.

“I really don’t believe you’d be doing the community any good by setting term limits on the volunteers in this community,” he added.

Selectman Bill Hallisey noted there were many impressive applicants for Morrison’s seat, when selectmen recently voted to reappoint him to the commission. Giving someone else a chance is important, Hallisey added, particularly when there are so many qualified candidates.

Selectman Butch Machado also seemed to lean toward Quintal’s approach.

The Masons are successful partly because of term limits for members, Machado said.

“You need to generate new ideas and new enthusiasm,” he added.

Instituting term limits isn’t really the solution to a problem with a committee member who has been the subject of many complaints, Selectman John Mahoney said.

Malaguti and Mahoney both noted that selectmen can remove appointed committee members and officials who don’t fulfill their duties.

“Term limits are the easy way out,” Malaguti added. “Everything should be dealt with on an individual basis.”

But it’s not all that easy to remove an appointed official, according to Arrighi. There has to be just cause for removal and a public hearing, she added, as well as documentation supporting the action, such as written complaints. Oftentimes complaints center around personalities, she said, and personal disputes are problematic when it comes to rationally weighing a person’s performance on a board or committee.

“I think what I am going to do for the fall, as long as I can get to it on time, is to submit a charter requirement that the board provide appointed committee and board members with the opportunity for a hearing prior to removal,” Arrighi said. “That way, it clearly says in the charter that there is a removal process. When there isn’t clearly a process or reference in the charter, then you have to look to the law to remove a committee member.”

Amending the charter to include this removal provision would clearly give selectmen appointing and removal authority, so appointed committee and board members couldn’t argue there’s no law giving selectmen that power, she added.

From The Eagle Tribune
by: Taylor Armerding

It is time for term limits — not just on the presidency, but on elective offices at every level.

Past time, actually. I know it’s an idea that has been floated — in some cases adopted — over the decades. I know that in California, one of the few states where it exists, it is not held in universally high regard.

I know its chances in Massachusetts are slim and none, since it is almost always promoted by those who are seeking office, not those holding it.

It was, after all, the Merrimack Valley’s own Martin Meehan who famously said he’d limit himself to eight years as a congressman, and then move either up or out. But that was before he got elected. Once he cleared that hurdle, he “grew,” “evolved” and had an epiphany: He would be cheating his constituents of his experience, expertise and influence if he kept his promise.

Ironically, he didn’t seem all that worried a few years later about cheating his constituents when he got the chance for the big bucks with no heavy lifting, as president of UMass Lowell.

But at least term limits is once again a gleam in somebody’s eye — even that of an elected official.

The Massachusetts Republican Party is considering an initiative petition calling for it, and a sitting legislator — Rep. Karyn Polito, R-Shrewsbury — has filed a bill to amend the state constitution to set a limit of 12 years for a given office.

Like I said, its chances are slim and none.

But it ought to be a layup. Not because term limits will magically fix everything that is wrong with government. But government is really, truly broken. And curbing the entrenched political career is one substantive step toward bringing back representative government.

Right now, elected officials rarely represent the people. They represent their people, which is to say, government employees.

And because of that symbiotic relationship, the powers of incumbency are virtually insurmountable. Elected officials roll over for the public employee unions — the recent focus on unconscionable perks for those in the public sector is proof of that — and the unions in turn make sure those officials stay in office.

Public employees are the ones, after all, who have enough time off to knock on doors, hold signs on street corners, lobby at the Statehouse and get the loyalist troops to the polls.

The rest of us are too busy trying to make a living so we can pay for all this.

This has turned the “career in public service” into a career of being served by the public. The “servant” has become the master.

Things are upside down, broken by any logical measure.

If elected officials knew there was a limit on their time in office, there is at least a chance that they would think more about what is best for the entire state, because they would know they would be rejoining the private sector at some point.

Of course, there are arguments against term limits. I’ve heard them all, and they are persuasive only to those who want a broken system to stay broken.

One is Meehan’s theory, that it would be foolish to throw out all the experience and expertise.

The reality is that it doesn’t take long for a new legislator to get up to speed. What is more significant is that most newly elected officials storm into office vowing to change the system, and then the system changes them.

Longevity rarely makes legislators better. It just makes them more entrenched. Regular turnover would counter that a bit.

The majority of the private sector recognizes this. It is rare, except in cases where a business is family owned, for the same CEO to remain for life, or even for a decade. Change is good — new blood means new, fresh thinking — and nobody thinks a new person coming in is going to need four years to be able to do the job effectively.

Look at the most powerful elective office in the country. In the view of President Barack Obama’s adoring supporters, he’s done a brilliant job just in his first six months. No need for the continued experience and expertise of George W. Bush.

Then there’s the argument that it would be undemocratic to block citizens from electing their rep or senator as many times as they want.

No, it wouldn’t. Not if the people vote for term limits. That’s perfectly democratic.

If term limits are so bad, why do we have them on the president? If lifetime legislators are so good for us, why not a lifetime president? We can elect somebody different anytime we want, right?

Fortunately, that delusion was exposed by the tenure of FDR. It would lead to an imperial presidency. At the lower levels, it has delivered a “political class” that is both more powerful and wealthier than its servants in the private sector.

At the least, term limits would give us more diversity in government. And all we hear from our legislators is how much they favor diversity, right?

When it comes to them, not so much, I’m afraid.

Taylor Armerding is associate editorial page editor of The Eagle-Tribune. He may be reached at 978-946-2213 or at tarmerding@eagletribune.com. Read him daily at The Soapbox, the Eagle-Tribune blog at blogs.eagletribune.com/soapbox