David Michael Miller
Dear Sen. Leah Vukmir, Secretary Sheila Harsdorf and Speaker Robin Vos:
In 2005, as state legislators, the three of you helped pass Act 233. The act was a response to Kelo v. City of New London (2005), in which the U.S. Supreme Court decided that a municipality can expropriate a privately-owned property and hand it over to a corporation without violating the Constitution. You went ahead and prohibited such use of eminent domain in Wisconsin by statute. You left an exception for property that is “blighted,” a term for which you laid out a very restrictive definition. Gov. Jim Doyle signed the legislation in 2006.
It was a noble, bipartisan effort to protect the rights of Wisconsinites. But the law has proved useless, and you and the rest of the Republicans who run the state are to blame.
When I heard that Foxconn was considering Wisconsin for a new megafactory, I braced for a GOP-fueled explosion of crony capitalism and corporate welfare. The ardor with which your party has blurred the line between public and private interests has, however, shocked even my jaded expectations.
When Foxconn set its sights on a charmingly bucolic area of southeastern Wisconsin, I wondered how you all would pull this project off without using eminent domain. The answer came in early June, when the village of Mount Pleasant officially designated the entire four-square mile area that Foxconn wants as blighted.
Wait … blighted?!? The area does not by any stretch meet the strict definition of blight in Act 233.
Turns out that you, Sen. Vukmir, as co-author of the law, kind of blew it. Legal sources at the time agreed that you intended to redefine blight for purposes of eminent domain. But because the act fails to say so outright, Mount Pleasant latched on to a definition of “blighted area” in the far-flung, much older Blight Elimination and Slum Clearance Act: “An area which is predominantly open and which … substantially impairs or arrests the sound growth of the community.” The blight declaration purportedly exempted the village from the strictures of Act 233, freeing it to take land on behalf of a corporation.
In 2005, Sen. Vukmir, you shared credit for protecting Wisconsinites from exactly this type of taking. You have a responsibility to cry foul over the village’s legal chicanery. But all I hear, as you bop around the state seeking a seat in the U.S. Senate, is breathless praise for the Foxconn project.
Secretary Harsdorf, you were a cosponsor of Act 233, and a consistently strong voice for agricultural interests during your Senate tenure.
Now, as head of the Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection (DATCP), you are surely aware that your agency’s 2017 Agricultural Impact Statement recognized that “most of the property in the project area is part of the Racine County Farmland Preservation Plan that was certified by DATCP in 2015.” So you know, as lone village board dissenter Gary Feest emphasized after the blight vote, that “there’s nothing wrong with any of these properties.”
If this area is blighted, Madam Secretary, then not a single farm in Wisconsin is safe from being forcibly paved over for corporate advantage. When I search for any sign that you’ve raised an alarm, all I find is a fulsome celebration of Foxconn that you penned for your hometown newspaper.
Speaker Vos, in voting for Act 233, you said that it’s wrong to take land just because “some members of the public might have an interest in seeing another private entity develop it.” But last summer, in a Racine Journal Times interview hailing Foxconn’s arrival in your district, you pointed out that eminent domain could be used to push uncooperative property owners — constituents of yours! — off the land that Foxconn wants.
Late this spring, as the outcry within your district mounted, you finally showed a flash of concern, telling WPR that the affected property owners “have every right to stay there if that’s what they want to do.” Everything was aces for everyone anyhow, you implied, because there had not been any actual taking.
By then, Mr. Speaker, village officials had been credibly threatening to use eminent domain for several months. The threat alone gave them enormous leverage over your constituents. Anyway, where are you now that there is actual taking underway?
The few remaining property owners who have not buckled under are suing Mount Pleasant. But an unrelated case decided by the Wisconsin Supreme Court this summer might hamper their effort. Over vociferous dissents, the court’s majority ruled that “findings of blight are legislative determinations that do not present justiciable issues of fact or law.”
Madam Senator, Madam Secretary and Mr. Speaker, a few outraged press releases from powerful folks like you could still make a difference. But I get it. Having principles, and the spine to stand up for them, is a career killer in today’s Republican Party.
Michael Cummins is a Madison-basedbusiness analyst.
