Tourist stand in front of The Alamo in San Antonio.
Photo:
Jerry Lara/Associated Press
The badly outnumbered men who made their final stand against the Mexican Army in 1836 made the Alamo a symbol of Texas freedom. Today the Alamo is again the setting for a battle over liberty. Last week San Antonio’s City Council voted 9-2 to authorize the use of eminent domain to take a bar owner’s property because the city wants it for a $400 million makeover of the Alamo mission and battle site.
The bar is called the
Moses Rose’s
Hideout, named for the man who is said to have deserted his comrades at the Alamo to save himself. The owner,
Vince Cantu,
has rejected offers to buy him out, the most recent at $3.5 million. The latest appraisal projects the bar’s value in 10 years at $2.8 million, so San Antonio thinks its offer is more than generous.
But this gets it backward. The bar is Mr. Cantu’s property to sell or not, and to set his own price for selling. He says the $17 million price he thinks fair includes a million for each year he has had to put up with the city’s efforts to seize his property. It also includes projected income from the city’s planned development that he would be giving up. The question is whether it’s right for the government not only to take a person’s property but to set the price and negotiate with the threat of eminent domain hanging in the background.
The Supreme Court’s misguided 5-4 decision in Kelo v. New London (2005) expanded the Fifth Amendment’s requirement of “public use” to include economic development, and not only public works. In her dissent Justice
Sandra Day O’Connor
wrote that, under Kelo’s logic, “nothing is to prevent the State from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton.” That it exactly what San Antonio is doing to Mr. Cantu’s Moses Rose’s Hideout.
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