Eminant domain

on and others’ characterization that to “export electrons over a wire” is no different than exporting logs down rivers is at best disingenuous. The trouble is, the electrons are not the issue; the lands condemned beneath the proposed power lines are. The wires are not there. The rivers already are.

Those electric lines are not a river. They need to be built. They are not natural. Rivers cross property lines, and have since long before they became private; no one has contended, at least not since 1972, that there is not a public right to travel the rivers, as they are Constitutionally treated as “public highways”. However, there has been for quite a few centuries, a prohibition against trespass onto private property without permission, as well as the Montana Constitutional right of landowners to acquire and protect their lands from any and all potential “takers”.

There is NO “public use” within Montana for the electrons proposed to be exported by the construction of power lines under debate in HB 198. The “power of eminent domain”, and the purpose or “public use” for which it is invoked, must benefit a substantial proportion of the people whose properties are proposed for condemnation. That includes quite a few Montanans. I see nothing in the bill, other than nebulous and transitory “jobs,” as being a public benefit to Montanans of such convoluted stretching of the power of eminent domain.

HB 198 makes no pretense that any Montana citizens will benefit from the actual power exported over those private lines. Thus, the eminent domain angle being used to acquire private lands for private profits through government force is at best a ruse - despite the Kelo decision, which itself rested on a faulty expansion of the definition of a limited constitutional use of such power. Even SCOTUS members are human and can make mistakes, otherwise that decision would have been 9-0, not 5-4. To base statutes and legalisms on such a split decision is NOT sound public policy.

HB 198 is nothing but an attempted “color of law” theft of private property, and therefore an unconstitutional power and property grab by foreign and domestic energy speculators. The wind generator proponents are private speculators who, by their own admissions and testimony, have said they could not export electricity from Montana if the state did not give some other private speculator the power to condemn private property for both private speculators’ private gains.

This is an unconscionable perversion of the power of eminent domain. Any honest Legislator, with integrity, would see that and not try to twist the limitations of government for the private gain of a few at the great expense of the many.

Please vote no pass on HB 198.

by Jim Greaves, Thompson Falls