By MICHAEL GORMLEY
Associated Press Writer
ALBANY, N.Y. -- Republican candidate for governor Bill Weld on Wednesday strongly opposed governments' growing power under a U.S. Supreme Court decision to use eminent domain to take private property to spur economic development.
"If that's true, government can destroy an entire neighborhood of homes if they can be replaced by tenants who will pay higher taxes," Weld told The Associated Press. "That, to put it mildly, doesn't strike me as the American way. This isn't communist China."
Weld, a former federal prosecutor in the Reagan administration, was to detail his attack on last year's U.S. Supreme Court decision in a speech Wednesday to the conservative Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. He said he's making the issue part of the campaign because the next governor could seize that power.
"I think the issue cuts very deep," Weld said in an interview before the speech. "It raises the specter of statism."
The speech underscores Weld's position as a libertarian Republican, a political approach that helped him be elected to two terms as governor of heavily Democratic Massachusetts.
"Title to every property in this nation is now effectively clouded by the threat of a government taking ... in the name of increasing the value upon which government can levy imposts," he told the group.
GOP candidate for governor Patrick Manning, meanwhile, also called the court decision "un-American."
"I think Gov. Weld is right on the mark by making this a campaign issue," said Manning, an assemblyman from Dutchess County, in a separate interview. "This is a far cry from taking a sliver of land to make a safer road. This is the private sector working hand in hand with big government against the private citizen."
"The Supreme Court is dead wrong on this issue," said GOP candidate for governor Randy Daniels. "Government needs the power of eminent domain, but it is a power that should rarely be used."
Daniels said use of the law designed to provide fair market value for private land is justified for parks, public parking, stadiums and community facilities.
GOP candidate John Faso, however, said government should have the power among its tools for economic development, but shouldn't resort to it simply to transfer property to owners who would pay more taxes. He cited the need for eminent domain to take commercial properties including strip clubs and porno shops in the renewal of Manhattan's 42nd Street.
"Weld's proposals would have precluded the redevelopment of 42nd Street," said Faso, the former Assembly minority leader, lawyer and one-time lobbyist.
In June, a divided U.S. Supreme Court broadened the government's right to seize private property, and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said then it could mean wealthy investors and city leaders were given the power to run people from their homes to make way for new development.
The high court ruled the Connecticut city of New London could raze a residential neighborhood and replace it with hotels and offices that officials say could add millions of dollars to the tax base. But city officials and developers said that taking property is sometimes the only way to spur development in cities struggling to pay bills.
In Albany, Democratic Assemblyman Richard Brodsky of Westchester has proposed a bill that would provide better protections for homeowners against eminent domain.
Weld quoted American historian Louis Hartz: "`The essence of democracy is the idea that the individual may not be thrust into a corner' ... That's right. This (Supreme Court) decision runs 180 degrees in the opposite direction."
Democrats Eliot Spitzer, the state attorney general; and Tom Suozzi, the Nassau County executive, are also running.
Copyright (c) 2006, The Associated Press
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