Greg Bean

Coda

Advocate's report is cause for optimism

You have to wonder if Long Branch municipal attorney James Aaron was reading the same report on the woeful inadequacy of New Jersey's eminent domain laws that everyone else was reading.

The report, released May 18 by state Public Advocate Ronald K. Chen, was the first project completed by the advocate since he was named to the post by Gov. Jon Corzine in January - which gives you some idea of how important the governor's administration and the advocate consider the issue of taking private property by eminent domain.

Since it's 45 pages long and hard slogging, I won't go into a lot of detail about the report's conclusions or recommenda-tions in this column. The report was covered in an extensive story last week in Greater Media Newspapers' publication the Atlanticville, and that story, and a sidebar, are available online at www.gmnews.com. The entire report is available for downloading from the public advocate's Web site, www.state.nj.us/publicadvocate.

In a nutshell, however, the report says that New Jersey's eminent domain laws are fouled up beyond all recognition, and do not protect the rights of tenants and property owners sufficiently to prevent their properties being taken on virtual whim by a government who thinks the property could be put to a more profitable or productive use.

"For instance," the report states, "Drumthwacket, the Governor's official residence, is a 'stately home' that is 'one of the most fabled and elegant of America's executive residences.' Yet the property could also be considered 'not fully productive' because a hotel or apartment house catering to hundreds, for instance, would be a more productive use of the property."

In other words, Drumthwacket is no safer from some corporation that wants to build a Motel Six or an upscale condo development at the location than the owners of 36 properties in Long Branch who are fighting to keep their beachfront homes from being razed so that developers can replace the homes with a three-building, 185-unit, luxury condominium development.

If you have followed the course of this battle over the last year, you know that municipal officials in Long Branch have done almost everything wrong in their ham-fisted grab for these private properties. And if you believe in the private property rights guaranteed in the Consti-tution, your heart goes out to the homeowners who have drawn their line in the sand and sworn to fight this greedy assault to the bitter end.

Their fight so far has attracted widespread attention and made Long Branch the national poster child for eminent domain abuse. And as I read the public advocate's report, I got the sense that Chen was not only making recommendations to state lawmakers on how to revamp our eminent domain laws, he was speaking almost directly to officials in Long Branch and telling them, in no uncertain terms, just where they went astray.

It was a damning indictment, and almost everyone I've spoken to who read it concurred - the text of the report supports the contention that the property owners of MTOTSA (Marine and Ocean Terraces and Seaview Avenue) are getting a raw deal.

Everyone, that is, but James Aaron, whose down-the-rabbit-hole take on Chen's report is right out of "Alice in Wonderland." Long Branch, Aaron said, has done everything right. The city, has already been complying with the reforms recommended by the advocate.

"Mr. Chen concluded that the use of eminent domain to redevelop a municipality is a necessary tool and is to continue," Aaron told the Atlanticville. "He never said that he wants to disrupt what is already in place. All the changes he recommended would not affect any matters already or in the future in Long Branch."

Oh, really?

I think that even if Chen's report is too late to save the homes in the MTOTSA neighborhood, it has provided ample ammunition to tie the city of Long Branch up in court for decades.

And despite what Aaron says, Chen's 45-page report never suggests that the process of taking private property by eminent domain continue in this state without a serious overhaul of the laws to protect the rights of tenants and property owners.

In response to the report, Assemblyman Michael J. Panter (D-12) intro-duced a bill last week that calls for a 24-month moratorium on the exercise of certain eminent domain powers by state, county and municipal powers.

"The moratorium would apply to the use of eminent domain to take private property when the primary purpose for the taking is economic development that will ultimately result in ownership of that property being vested in another private person," the bill states.

In other words, it would stop municipalities like Long Branch from taking perfectly nice beachfront homes in order to build luxury condominiums that will put millions and millions of dollars into developers' pockets and leave the original property owners in the lurch.

Panter said the bill, which has not yet been assigned to committee, would be a stop-gap measure until the Legislature decides on how to entirely revamp state statutes regarding eminent domain. There's no language in the bill to address whether the moratorium would include areas where takings by eminent domain are already under way (like MTOTSA), or whether redevelopment areas like MTOTSA would be grandfathered and allowed to proceed.

Still, it's a good start, and it should give heart to the owners of the MTOTSA properties as they continue their campaign to save their homes. And it should give heart to those of us who support them.

(By the way, the Long Branch City Council slated yet another closed executive session on redevelopment for May 31. So much for government transparency in these matters, as per Chen's recommendations.)

Gregory Bean is executive editor of Greater Media Newspapers. He can be reached at gbean@gmnews.com.