Congress Hears More Kelo Testimony
By Tara Fehr
WASHINGTON, Sept. 22-Michael Cristofaro still vividly remembered telling his father that New London needed his property to build a sea wall that would protect the city’s residents. Confused, but with little resistance, his parents, who emigrated from Italy, left their first and only home in the United States to protect their community.
The wall was never built. Instead, an office park replaced Cristofaro’s childhood home.
Cristofaro is still affected when he passes the park, and now he’s about to lose his home for a second time. After refusing to sell, the city and the New London Development Corp. issued an eminent domain order, declaring that his property was required for public use..
Cristofaro told his story Thursday afternoon to members of the House Judiciary Committee’s Constitution Subcommittee at a hearing to examine the Supreme Court’s June eminent domain decision in Kelo v. New London.
Critics of the ruling want Congress to adopt legislation defining “public use” to exclude private commercial development.
New London first informed Cristofaro and 14 other families in 2000 of its intention to acquire their land for economic development. The city wants to build hotels and condominiums in the Fort Trumbull area.
The argument discussed before the committee, then, was how to distinguish public from private development. Unlike 30 years ago, when his parents lost their home, Cristofaro, his family and their community decided to fight.
When the Supreme Court, by five to four, ruled in the city’s favor, members of Congress decided to act..
“The Supreme Court’s majority decision approving the government’s taking of private property for commercial development has been met with strong disapproval by the American people,” Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio), chairman of the subcommittee, said in his opening statement.
Cristofaro was one of three witnesses arguing for limits on the use of eminent domain, along with Dana Berliner, one of his attorneys, and Hilary Shelton, the director of the NAACP’s Washington office.
Indianapolis mayor Bart Peterson was the lone voice arguing against federal involvement, saying that eminent domain should remain a state decision.
“If cities did not have this tool it would be impossible for economic development or redevelopment,” Peterson said.
Berliner disagreed. She believes the problem lies with local governments. “I do not believe this should be left to the local governments because that’s how we got where we are today,” she said.
Subcommittee members mainly disagreed with the Supreme Court’s decision.
Rep. Thomas Feeney (R-Fla.) expressed his fear that the Constitution will be “morphed” into the biases of the Supreme Court.
Noting that the Constitution doesn’t allow the government to take people’s property “without due process of law,” Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) said that life cannot exist without property.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), the panel’s senior Democrat, said he was torn. He didn’t agree with how eminent domain was handled in the New London case, he said, but he also sees why it’s needed.
The House has already passed a resolution, 365-33, expressing its disapproval of the Kelo decision.
Rep. Robert Simmons (R-Conn.), who voted for the resolution, sympathizes with his constituents, according to his chief of staff. Simmons experienced the consequences of eminent domain with his family in the 1960s when they were asked to move so that a highway could be built.
The next step is not defined yet, said Jeff Lungren, spokesman for Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wisc.), the chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
“We’re going to continue to pursue this issue, and it will be on the agenda,” Lungren said.
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