We adjourned last week just as former County Commissioner Bruce Woodbury was trooping into the newspaper\u2019s offices Oct. 13, accompanied by Jacob Snow of the Regional Transportation Monopoly, Susan Martinovich of the Nevada Department of Transportation, et al.<\/p>\n
The group sang in harmony a two-part tune which insisted life under PISTOL (The “P<\/strong>eople\u2019s I<\/strong>nitiative to S<\/strong>top the T<\/strong>aking of O<\/strong>ur L<\/strong>ands”) is an abomination, while the changes they want to make in the hard-won Constitutional Amendment are minimal, minimal …<\/p>\n For instance, PISTOL allows land owners to collect attorneys\u2019 fees if they fight a threatened eminent domain taking. Mr. Snow says this provision is already generating many \u201cscurrilous suits,\u201d including one in which the land owner is suing on the contention his property\u2019s value has been decreased because the Regional Transportation planners marked his land as a future bridge site.<\/p>\n Get it? If you can\u2019t sell your land, or have to sell it for less, because it\u2019s identified on an official government map for future seizure to provide a home for a police station or a bridge abutment, and you sue for the amount by which they\u2019ve thus devalued your land, Mr. Snow considers you \u201cscurrilous.\u201d<\/p>\n Meantime, Mr. Woodbury insists they don\u2019t want a very BIG change: Under their plan, the land owner would still be able to \u201capply to the court\u201d for attorneys fees … and cross their fingers.<\/p>\n At the time the Pappas family decided to fight the seizure of their downtown retail block to build a parking garage (which sat mostly empty for years) for the private Fremont Street Experience and its doomed adjunct, NeoNecropolis, at least a dozen other local property owners gave up, decided \u201cyou can\u2019t fight city hall,\u201d and took the city\u2019s lowball offers. (The Pappas family fought for years to win ten times what they\u2019d initially been offered — though a quarter of that went to the lawyers.)<\/p>\n Why did the others — including former U.S. Sen. Chic Hecht — cave? They \u201ccould have applied for attorney fees\u201d years later, if they prevailed — precisely the same situation to which Mr. Woodbury would now like to revert. But no attorney will take such a case \u201con spec\u201d with no more guarantee than \u201cWe can get on our knees and beg for your fees later, someday, maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n This change would make all Mr. Snow\u2019s feared \u201cscurrilous suits\u201d go away, wouldn\u2019t it? And that\u2019s \u201cjust a small tweak\u201d?<\/p>\n PISTOL calls for separate jury trials to determine \u201cpublic use\u201d as well as property value. Mr. Woodbury et al. say that will take too long, they\u2019d rather have such decisions made by local judges . . . like the one who made several adverse rulings against the Pappases before acknowledging that maybe his ownership of stock in downtown casino The Four Queens constituted, um, maybe, just a SLIGHT conflict of interest. …<\/p>\n Ms. Martinovich complained what NDOT would like to do is gradually acquire land alongside I-15 between the Spaghetti Bowl and Sahara as the agency can afford to, evicting the small businesses there, throwing their employees on the dole, taking up to 15 years before they\u2019re ready to widen that stretch of the interstate. (Full disclosure: The brunette rents space at the Charleston Antique Mall, which would be affected, though I dare say she\u2019ll be able to relocate when necessary.)<\/p>\n But under PISTOL, the NDOT warrior queen complained, the state agency can\u2019t start buying up land and evicting tenants until they\u2019re within five years of actually building their project!<\/p>\n Oh, the humanity! Let us weep great crocodile tears for the Nevada Department of Transportation. It\u2019s intolerable! Already I can envision her clasping the dreaded asp to her bosom.<\/p>\n Does PISTOL really add costs? Or does it simply transfer those once-hidden costs to the government agencies that ought to factor those real costs into their plans, instead of requiring that the same costs be absorbed by those who always took the loss in the past — the private property owners?<\/p>\n Mr. Woodbury breathes a sigh of relief that at least ALL of PISTOL wasn\u2019t allowed to go on the ballot. Why, that would have required local government to pay the true costs of land devaluation caused by ALL their central planning schemes, including planning, zoning, and restrictive business licensing!<\/p>\n Repeal PISTOL? I\u2019ve got a better idea. Let\u2019s demand a chance to enact the rest of it.<\/p>\n Asked last week \u201cWhen are the voters going to get to vote on the second half of the PISTOL initiative?\u201d — the half the Supreme Court left lying on the floor when the \u201cbifurcated\u201d the voter-qualified petition back in 2006 — state Supreme Court Chief Justice Jim Hardesty told me, \u201cI can\u2019t comment on that, because it\u2019s a matter that could very well still come before the court.\u201d<\/p>\n Really? Then why doesn\u2019t someone do so?<\/p>\n Meantime, if central planning works so well, let the central planners go back to L.A., Chicago, or whatever self-created, unaffordable regulatory hellhole they fled to come here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We adjourned last week just as former County Commissioner Bruce Woodbury was trooping into the newspaper\u2019s offices Oct. 13, accompanied by Jacob Snow of the Regional Transportation Monopoly, Susan Martinovich of the Nevada Department of Transportation, et al. The group sang in harmony a two-part tune which insisted life under PISTOL (The “People\u2019s Initiative to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[47,39,10,34,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-redevelopment","category-2010-election","category-due-process","category-nevada","category-private-property"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-9W","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=616"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2082,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616\/revisions\/2082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}