March 28, 2024

Fry and eminent domain

Dear editor,

I found your article relating to the discussion of eminent domain at the recent legislative luncheon most interesting and informative.

It is always quite humorous when those of wealth and privilege feign indignation while channeling their best inner petulant child. How unfortunate that IQ scores and levels of affluence do not always go hand in hand. It surely must be a difficult existence maintaining Cadillac standards when condemned to exist within a Ford and Chevy environment.

Gallons of ink and reams of paper have been exhausted on the subjects of eminent domain and the local quest for a new water reservoir.

The crux of all of the arguments can be distilled down to these simple facts.

1. Osceola wants a new solitary reservoir which is roughly three times larger than the existing reservoir.

2. Osceola needs a supplemental alternative water source comparative in quantity to the existing reservoir.

3. By design and intent the powers of eminent domain are restrictive and exist to facilitate the accomplishment of precise and limited public needs, not public wants.

4. Those who seek to enact eminent domain are always financially supported by the public purse, while those who challenge such enacting always find themselves impotently out gunned and out manned both legally and financially.

I am disappointed that Representative Joel Fry has chosen to abstain and remain neutral in regards to the current House Study Bill 223, which seeks to clarify and strengthen current eminent domain law.

Rep. Fry continues to remain on the sidelines of this issue because of what he perceives to be a personal conflict of interest. I believe his thinking to be flawed in this instance.

The stakes here are far greater than those that would relate to a single individual or community.

My votes for Rep. Fry were to help put him in a position to cast votes based on his knowledge and conscience, regardless of whether they agreed with those of my own. That he would continue to sit out the fray based on some misguided and misplaced sense of integrity is indeed a bitter pill.

Rep. Fry is charged with not only the betterment of this his district, but perhaps more importantly the entire state of Iowa.

The fact that an issue has repeatedly come before him whose outcome could impact upon his personal interests should not prevent him from speaking his mind and honoring his representative obligations to the public at large.

In contrast, let me offer my thanks and respect to Representative Bobby Kaufmann for his sincere and tireless efforts to improve eminent domain law for all private property owners in the state of Iowa.

I am grateful to Rep. Kaufmann for working so diligently to ensure that the legal rights of all private property owners remain sacred and paramount within the Iowa Code.

While we may be preoccupied by current eminent domain issues, we must not lose sight of the fact that the potential for future public takings of private property will always remain a clear and present danger.

Whatever your position may be regarding pipelines, power transmission lines or the local CCRC reservoir, if you are a private property owner know this; there never has been, nor shall there ever be, an eminent domain law so arduous and restrictive as to prevent the progress of legitimate and necessary public improvements.