Great Turn-Out for the League's Third Annual Meeting

We had over 150 members and guests attend the third annual meeting of the League of Kentucky Property Owners. We all enjoyed an inspiring and informative talk from our keynote speaker, Emanuel McLittle from Selma, Oregon.

The Board of Directors greatly appreciates all those who attended the meeting. Our greatest achievements will be due to the efforts of our members, whose involvement is vital. An organization with true grassroots representation stands apart from the paid lobbyists. If we work together to preserve our great liberties - the foremost of which is our property rights - we can do much good for our heirs. Remember, your influence counts...if you use it!

And now, a word FOR our meeting Sponsors...Thanks to the following corporate sponsors. These companies have supported your League - support them in business if you can!

A. L. Baumgartner Construction, Inc.
606-485-4745

Bavarian Waste Hauling & Disposal
606-485-4416

Belleview Sand & Gravel
606-586-8211

The Drees Company
606-578-4200

Erpenbeck Engineers
606-727-4200

Greenebaum Doll & McDonald PLLC
606-655-4200

Griffin Industries, Inc.
606-655-4200

Tyranny's Victims

For years, Daniele Malpeli, the owner of a deli in Manhattan, has made deliveries with his bicycle. When he's not riding it on his rounds, he chains it to a tree in front of his deli. One of Malpeli's neighbors reported him to the city's Environmental Control Board for: abusing the tree.

The city's park commissioner, suggested to Malpeli that, were he to apologize to the tree, he might receive amnesty from the Environmental Control Board, which, in such cases, usually levies a $1,000 fine.

Malpeli got the message. "I hugged the tree 20 times and I kissed it too," Malpeli declared.

Under common law, apparently unknown in New York, there is no case, that the tree has not been harmed. The parks department claims that if a tree's bark is sufficiently damaged by a bicycle chain, it could damage the tree, which then could fall on a passer-by, but this hasn't happened, so where's the case? No one has argued that anyone, or even the tree, has been harmed.

Of course, under fashionable administrative law, one simply punishes those who break rules, and apparently there is a rule about attaching bicycles to trees, or is there? The report that is the "law" prohibits anyone from "tampering, trimming, or otherwise interfering" with the trees in New York. This is a case for lawyers, who will decide what constitutes "tampering...or otherwise interfering"
with a tree.

Absurd as this case is, it illustrates perfectly what happens when God's law, or common law, is replaced with administrative rules and regulation. We not only have several individuals giving proof of their lunacy, but an entire bureaucratic establishment supporting them: clerks, judges, lawyers, all of whom will be busily employed hotly debating whether Mr. Malpeli can adequately make atonement for his wicked behavior or by kissing a tree.

Everyone knows it isn't safe to walk New York's streets, even in daylight. Few of us realized, however, that the danger consisted in the possibility that a tree, abused by a bicyclist's chain, might fall on our heads.

-The Covenant Syndicate
Chattanooga, TN

Property Owner's Case is Ripe for Review

On May 27, 1997 the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in the case of Bernadine Suitum V. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency. The Court's ruling brings dramatic change to how governmental entities with land use permitting authority deal with property owners.

In 1972, Bernadine Suitum and her late husband acquired an 18,300 square-foot lot in a residential area of Incline Village, Nevada. When she sought to obtain a permit to build a house on the lot, her application was denied because the land was included in a "stream environment zone" (SEZ) created fifteen years after she took title to the property. The SEZ prohibited any "new land coverage or other permanent land disturbance" within the zone (i.e., the lot must stay in its natural state).

Under the Supreme Court's 1992 decision in Lucas, this is a per se taking of Mrs. Suitum's property rights since there is no question she was deprived of all the beneficial or productive use of her building lot. Rather than paying her just compensation as the Fifth Amendment requires, however, the government essentially gave her a "lottery ticket": whereby she could "win" the right to transfer development rights (TDRs) equal to only one percent of her original lot size to another lot somewhere else. Moreover, even if deemed eligible, she would be entitled to build the equivalent of only one bedroom.

Mrs. Suitum does not own another lot, and all she asks is that the government pay for the taking of her right to build on the lot she does own. When she challenged the government's refusal to pay just compensation for the taking of her property rights as unconstitutional, both the federal district court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that her case was not "ripe" for review because she had never tried to sell the TDR.

The Supreme Court held that the case is ripe for review and rejected the Ninth Circuit's contention that the potential to transfer development rights to another lot is not a "use" of property.

Polluted Agency

On June 10, 1998, an unprecedented public revolt broke out at the nation's most powerful regulatory agency. More than a dozen career employees of the Environmental Protection Agency believed there was "egregious misconduct" at the agency, explaining that the situation had become so reprehensible that they would risk their careers rather than choose to remain silent.

EPA Administrator Carol Browner - with the enthusiastic backing of her patron, Vice President Al Gore - has molded the EPA into an instrument of environmental zealotry that knows no legal or ethical bounds.

In 1996, EPA research microbiologist David Lewis concluded that the use of science had deteriorated so much under Ms. Browner that he sent letters to the EPA administrator and to Vice President Gore, drawing their attention to the situation. Receiving no response, Lewis, a 27-year veteran of the
agency, went public with an article in the highly respected British journal Nature.

In that article, "EPA Science: Casualty of Election Politics," Lewis wrote that the EPA had "an irrational approach" to protecting the environment, one that gave a higher priority to issuing regulations than to developing the underlying science. Lewis alleged that the science behind the EPA's wastewater toxicity tests-based on water-flea reproduction, and the backbone of the agency's Clean Water Act enforcement program-was totally unreliable. Independent studies have since verified his assertions, and the EPA no longer recommends the test.

Meanwhile, high-level EPA officials hit Lewis with a slew of trumped-up ethics violations. He was, among other things, accused of violating EPA rules requiring disclaimers on his articles explaining that his views do not necessarily represent EPA policy.

Lewis filed a whistleblower's complaint with the Labor Department, which not only ruled in his favor but also concluded that the EPA officials had violated six federal statutes in harassing him.

-National Review, August 1998