Nick Sprayregen is a small business owner targeted by Columbia University, the city of New York and New York State. His family owns four commercial properties, and operates a self-storage business, in the neighborhood Columbia wants.
Sprayregen told his story in a September 3 Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “Columbia University Has No Right to My Land.” It should be read by all small business owners in order to grasp the risks to their property – to their very livelihood – if a large private entity and government get together to advance a grand plan in which the little guy doesn’t happen to fit.
The story is not all that unusual – the threats; the bullying; the good-old-boy political network; and the casual declaration of “blight” when the term “blight” means whatever the politicians say it means.
The opening to the piece grabs one’s attention, and is worth highlighting here:
In the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the government is permitted to take private property only for "public use." This clause was once limited to true public projects such as the construction of highways, fire houses and public libraries. But over the last 50 years it has been bastardized by the powerful (in collusion with compliant politicians and the acquiescence of the courts) into a weapon used routinely to forcibly take other people's property for nonpublic uses.
Here is another ugly example of why state and federal elected officials need to step up and pass legislation to make sure that these abuses stop. Such reforms have occurred in some states. But in many places, including New York and at the federal level, property owners are still waiting.
Raymond J. Keating
Chief Economist
Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council
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