No disrespect to the advocacy of Mayor Oscar Goodman—who described the Pappas v. City of Las Vegas case (the city gave the family's land to Fremont Street casinos for a private parking garage) as an "albatross"—or Henderson mayor Jim Gibson (bragging that his city has never used eminent domain) or North Las Vegas Mayor Michael Montandon (big-upping his city council for adopting restrictive ordinances), but it was Bruce Woodbury, a man who speaks in lullaby-quiet tones, whose opposition rang loudest. Partly because he's the patron saint of local politicos; them's the perks of a scandal-free 25 years in government service. But mostly because of his dispassionate, clinical dissection of PISTOL (billions in lost revenue, clogged courts, curtailed highway and flood control projects, a loss of quality of life).
So what is PISTOL?
Also known as the Nevada Property Owners' Bill of Rights, the initiative chiefly does four things: outlaws the government transfer of property between private parties, mandates that property taken for public use be valued at the highest and best use, defines fair-market value as the "highest price the property would bring on the open market" and limits land seizures for public uses. And why is PISTOL on the ballot?
Last year's Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. City of New London, Connecticut gave governments the power to use eminent domain to promote private economic development. Scores of people say the ruling gives municipalities the power to give private homes, businesses and properties to developers. They say eminent domain should only be used for public uses. Others say the Kelo ruling strips poor neighborhoods of protection against gentrification. Nevada joins California, Arizona, Idaho, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma and Washington with ballot initiatives to limit eminent domain.
Who's for it—and who's against it?
The main backers are Don Chairez, a former state Supreme Court Justice and current attorney general candidate, and local attorney Kermitt Waters, who's bankrolled the initiative. And, if you believe a September poll commissioned by the Review-Journal, 60 percent of Nevadans also support PISTOL.
The detractors range from the Nevada Taxpayers Association to the Progressive Alliance of Nevada to the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, which represents nearly 7,000 businesses.
The Nevada Conservation League has been opposed to PISTOL from the jump, says executive director Scot Rutledge. It would make smart-growth planning impossible, he says, and a provision that would require land not used within five years to be returned to the owner would force governments to pay current-market value to re-acquire the land, which drains taxpayers.
"There's been a lot of discussion about how the five-year rule will affect building roads and highways, but something that hasn't been touched on is how the initiative would cripple any meaningful mass transit and public transit opportunities. You can't manage growth effectively if you can't plan accordingly," Rutledge says. "Then there's concern among the environmental community about handcuffing government planning. We're a landlocked area and we should want to be able to maintain a certain amount of parks of green space. Not being able to do this would hurt quality of life."
Handed out at the Main Street Station gathering, a memo from the U.S. Department of Transportation's Office of Real Estate Services says the five-year provision violates federal regulations on property interests and will threaten federal highway funding. But with PISTOL, Chairez hopes to avoid what happened in 1995, when the City of Las Vegas used eminent domain to hand a block of downtown land to the private Fremont Street Limited Liability Co. A judge at the time, Chairez invalidated the purchase, only to have the state Supreme Court sustain it (the Pappas family settled for $5.4 million).
Rutledge says of the plans to turn North 5th Street in North Las Vegas into a major corridor: "Eminent domain will have to be used. If (under PISTOL) the land purchased is not used within five years, it will be re-sold back to the owner at the original price, despite the higher value it may be worth. To buy back land to build such a large-scale project is more expensive for the government. This effectively limits a mass or public transit component. Then there are all the potential lawsuits. We could be spending tax money on attorneys' fees for people who want to be litigious because they think their land isn't being taken for public use."
If PISTOL passes, the ballot initiative would have to be approved by voters again, in 2008, before it could become law.