We blogged in the past
here about House Bill 3 pending in the North Carolina
General Assembly, which is entitled: "AN ACT TO AMEND THE
NORTH CAROLINA CONSTITUTION TO PROHIBIT CONDEMNATION OF PRIVATE
PROPERTY EXCEPT FOR A PUBLIC USE, TO PROVIDE FOR THE PAYMENT OF
JUST COMPENSATION WITH RIGHT OF TRIAL BY JURY IN ALL CONDEMNATION
CASES, AND TO MAKE SIMILAR STATUTORY CHANGES."
The Bill's title should give you a sense of its contents.
If you'd like to know more, you can view the Bill in its current form or
you can revisit our prior piece from January of this year.
The legislative staff provides its own summary here.
What makes things a little more interesting is the N.C. Court of
Appeals recent decision in Town of Matthews v. Wright,
which we blogged about here. In Wright, the
Court of Appeals reiterated that a taking by a local government
must be for both a public use and a public
benefit; the Town could not show a public benefit, and thus
improperly exercised its eminent domain powers. If the test
is conjunctive rather than disjunctive as between "public
use" and "public benefit", as the Wright
case reminds is true in a local government context, does the
amendment proposed by HB 3 removing "public benefit" from
the private condemnor calculus actually remove one prong
of/obstacle to condemnation? In other words, in the wake of
HB 3 should it become law and as the courts read the laws, will a
private condemnor need show ONLY "public use" rather than
BOTH "public use" and "public benefit"?
We're not so sure that is the intended outcome by the
drafters of and supporters of HB 3, who likely believe the test to
be "disjunctive" or, at least, do not want the taking
power to be made "easier" for the potential
condemnors.
Since we blogged at the time of its introduction, House Bill 3
passed the House in February by a 113-5 count. It currently
sits in the Senate Rules Committee. The Bill -- which would
allow a ballot measure to amend the State constitution -- must make
it out of the Senate. We'll see if it does. If so,
the measure would appear on the May 2016 ballot.
Stay tuned.
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