Alabama can now take your land, give it away
“Somehow, some way, without public hearing or opposition from anybody in Montgomery, the Alabama Legislature this session passed a bill allowing the government to take blighted property. The bill, which Gov. Robert Bentley signed into law, allows cities to take property not only to benefit the health and welfare of the community, but to use it in the recruitment of private businesses.
Senate Bill 96, sponsored by GOP Senators Arthur Orr, Paul Sanford, Bill Holtzclaw, Shadrack McGill and Clay Scofield, gives cities the power to decide what is in the public interest, and allows them to use eminent domain for “public and private” uses such as car plants, airplane makers and more.
In other words … if Airbus wants it. Airbus gets it.
It was less than a decade ago that Republicans and Democrats alike stood together in Alabama and, led by then-Gov. Bob Riley, bristled at the very notion of eminent domain.
A U.S. Supreme Court ruling threatened to expand the use of eminent domain, and Riley and others reacted. House Speaker Mike Hubbard – then head of the Republican caucus — vowed to protect the property rights of Alabamians.
“If we start having to fear government coming and taking private property away from us, that’s what separates us from communist countries,” Hubbard told the Tuscaloosa News in 2005.”
Archibald, John. Alabama.com 1 April 2013.