Property Rights Will Be At Risk

C. Paul Smith former Frederick City Alderman and Republican had a letter in today's Frederick News Post that requires comment. The letter reads in part:

The commissioners' plan to downzone properties around municipalities would sharply cut the values of these properties and would be a "taking" of property values that owners are powerless to stop. The front-page News-Post article of April 3 reports on one of dozens of properties that would be stripped of significant value by the proposed comprehensive plan.

The entire text of the letter is here.

This is my response which I've submitted to the Post:

Are we sick of Conservatives yet? How many times do we have to hear the same tired arguments from them about Property Rights, zoning, and “Takings”?
There is a basic belief at work in these arguments that needs to be put out of our misery once and for all: that giving more and more money to rich people is always a good thing.
Many have been conditioned to believe that people gain wealth by some type of free-market magic (or, in rare circumstances hard work). Only the taking away of wealth is done by man.
Nonsense.
Government zones land, including private property. We hear no bleating when agricultural land is ‘up-zoned’ to residential. In fact, if it’s our property we feel entitled to the new zoning.
Gandhi had a term for that kind of thing: Wealth Without Work
We never hear calls of ‘givings’ and demands for the property owner pay the community for their new, undeserved wealth.
In fact, we’re told that the new zoning, and the ensuing hundreds (or thousands) of new homes and strip malls will benefit the community.
No, at long last we are able to see past the greedy, Conservative mantra of ‘gimme gimme gimme’ and ‘more, more, more’.
Decades of the false idea that ‘I can do what I want with my property’ has brought us to the sorry state we are in.
At long last we clearly see that property decisions affect us all; we live in a community.

As I tried to bring out in my response, this issue is more than just about zoning and property; it's about community and how we think our economy should work.

I did a brief search for background information and found a good explanation of Takings at the Georgetown Environmental Law and Policy Institute.

These issues go to the core of assumptions that are no longer questioned and must be if we are to make the essential changes necessary to live in civilized society.

At PublicEye.org you can read an excellent analysis of Takings and Private Property rights.

Elections are coming here in Frederick County in a few months and there will be tremendous pressure to attack social and community movements under the guise of 'rebuilding the economy' and 'creating jobs'.

Now is the best chance we've had in a long time to not only question the basic assumptions that drive Capitalism, but attack them and move away from a predatory, destructive economic system.