Sanford signs eminent domain bill

Tony Baughman

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Gov. Mark Sanford signs a bill creating a committee to study eminent domain in South Carolina during a Monday ceremony in Aiken, witnessed by, from left, Reps. Jim Stewart and Skipper Perry and Sen. Greg Ryberg.

With last fall’s defeat of a controversial tax increment financing plan in Aiken County fresh in his mind, Gov. Mark Sanford signed a bill Monday that he says will limit when and how local governments may seize private property.

Sanford, backed by members of the Aiken County legislative delegation, signed the eminent domain legislation at the Aiken Municipal Building courtyard in The Alley.

“This does not represent as much as we would’ve liked to have seen when we talked about this back with the whole controversy over the TIF legislation here in Aiken, but it is a step in the right direction,” the governor said.

According to Sanford, the new law creates a special committee to study local governments’ power to take private property and to make recommendations for additional legal protection for property owners.

“I’m signing it in Aiken because it’s in some way an outgrowth of Senate Bill 97, which expanded the power of local government in so-called TIF districts to then allow government to help subsidize private development,” he said.

In June 2005, Sanford vetoed that Senate TIF bill, but the legislature overrode the veto. According to state Sen. Greg Ryberg, R-Aiken, that TIF legislation opened the door for Texas-based Fine-Deering Development Corp. to ask for tax increment funding in Aiken County to help pay for infrastructure at its Trolley Run Station and Sage Creek developments.

“The new definitions that were enacted in the 2005 TIF legislation that the governor referenced made virtually every acre in South Carolina open to seizure by our government,” Ryberg said. “The landowner could be stripped of the property for whatever compensation our government deemed appropriate.”

Fine-Deering’s TIF proposal was opposed by a group of area taxpayers and some members of County Council and ultimately was withdrawn.

Ryberg also used the signing ceremony as a chance to take an election-year swipe at his Senate counterpart and gubernatorial candidate Tommy Moore, D-Clearwater, who earlier this month earned the Democratic nomination to challenge Sanford in November.

“I think you can see very clearly today where our governor Mark Sanford stands on private property rights. He vetoed the TIF legislation, and I supported that veto,” he said. “Some in our county delegation, however, not only supported the legislation that would have made every acre in South Carolina blighted and open to seizure but also successfully lobbied to get the veto of the TIF legislation overridden.”

Ryberg stood behind the governor Monday as he signed the eminent domain bill, as did Republican state Reps. Jim Stewart and Skipper Perry and County Councilman Scott Singer.

“This will close some loopholes and help us more clearly define when government can utilize eminent domain,” Singer said. “We need to be real careful that we define it properly so that we, as local government, exercise that awesome authority that we do it for the public use, not necessarily a broad benefit.”

Monday’s signing of South Carolina’s eminent domain bill came exactly one year and three days after a U.S. Supreme Court decision, Kelo V. City of New London, upheld a Connecticut city’s decision to seize private property for corporate development. The high court’s ruling “jeopardizes the most fundamental of all American rights, which is this notion of home ownership,” the governor said.

This year, in addition to the eminent domain bill, the state Senate approved a constitutional amendment that would prevent local governments from taking property for economic development without showing “a clearly defined public use,” according to Sanford.

“I think it’s very important that we deal with it so that you don’t have governments going out and confiscating private property and put some other use on there that might create more tax revenue but again take away their fundamental rights,” he said.

The amendment will be on the ballot for ratification in November.