Quiet on the 207 front ... Until Now!

Flagstaff government was first, now Tucson government gives a poke at some "old school" private property rights diminution.

Just so the record is clear ... the resulting lawsuits are a direct cause of government regulatory takings.

During the successful 2006 campaign, opponents of private property rights howled that thousands of lawsuits would be filed. To date, only two have been filed with a couple of threatened lawsuits that were averted when the government backed down by following the Prop. 207 law.

Flagstaff's situation surrounds city government passage of a restrictive historic district overlay zone. The Pacific Legal Foundation is handling the suit.

Now the big bastion of liberalism, Tucson, has disregarded the Prop. 207 law and has preeminent attorney Clint Bolick knocking at the court house doors.

Doesn't the city council have some potholes to fix instead of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars defending the uber-liberal property control freaks desires to boss everybody in town around?

Quick excerpt from the Arizona Daily Star article of March 13, 2008:

Tucson developer Michael Goodman has sued the city for $12.5 million or permission to tear down more than a dozen buildings affected by a new law regulating demolition of potentially historic buildings.

The suit is one of the first in the state to test the limits of a proposition approved by Arizona voters in 2006, requiring governments to compensate property owners if their property value is negatively affected by land-use laws, said Clint Bolick, Goodman's lawyer.

The suit was filed Tuesday in Pima County Superior Court and asks for either exemption from the law or $12.5 million, based on the diminished property value of more than a dozen of Goodman's properties as a result of a new land-use law.

Another Proposition 207 suit was filed in October in Flagstaff on behalf of property owners affected by a historic preservation district there.

The Tucson suit targets a law passed by the City Council in June 2007 requiring completion of a study of the property on which demolition is proposed, and others in the area, as well as approval by the Tucson/Pima County Historical Commission, before a building can be demolished.

The law applies to buildings more than 45 years old that were within city limits in 1953.

This should be interesting watching the "do-gooders" get a legal whipping that will legally solidify the provisions of Prop. 207. I've got my popcorn ready for the big show.