The recent Supreme Court decision on Eminent Domain isn’t just scary, it’s downright wrong. It basically says the government can take your house or place of business if the opportunity exists to replace it with something generating more tax revenue — like a Wal-Mart, for example.

In my view, this will do nothing in the long term but create a new class of homeless people — those with low to middle incomes. These are typically folks living in the least expensive housing, which will now become low-hanging fruit for developers stalking business opportunities.

In places like Washington where growth management laws force large numbers of people into small, compact, urban areas, the problem will exacerbate itself much quicker than in suburban settings. In places where the developable area is centered around the availability of sewers and other required infrastructure, the cheapest real estate often becomes the easiest to redevelop — and there are often government grants available to do it.

Eminent Domain was intended as a tool for government to acquire property for necessary infrastructure like roads, schools, etc. It was NOT meant for government to legally steal your property and sell it to the highest bidder for the sole purpose of generating more tax revenue. However, with this decision, cash-strapped municipalities will be salivating at the chance to legally expand their tax base, when and wherever business envisions financial opportunity. It actually began happening within hours of the Supreme Court’s decision.

But as we drive all the low and middle-income people out of their homes to support a new Wal-Mart, or some other development, where will they go?

Growth management already artificially restricts the supply of housing, which has driven the cost out of reach for most young families. If we allow our already limited housing stock to be further depleted for no reason besides generating additional tax revenue, we’ll make housing even more unaffordable to a greater number of people. Dealing with social problems this creates — like homelessness and the inevitable crime it spawns — will cost significantly more than the tax revenue generated.

Our legislature must pass innovative legislation forcing municipalities using Eminent Domain to displace low and middle-income people to find or create replacement housing for them.

Ordinarily, I abhor government regulation. But in this instance, it may be the only way around what is clearly an unfair Supreme Court decision that directly attacks some of the most vulnerable in our society.

   I found the legislature’s use of the so-called “Emergency” clause in this last session to be simply unconscionable. Legislators gutted I-601, lowering the threshold to increase taxes from two-thirds to a simple majority vote. Attaching the emergency clause to 98 bills, approving a record $500 million in new taxes, including reinstating the death tax, all but eliminated the public’s ability to retaliate.

Not having enough tax money to spend is NOT an “Emergency.” Having legislators that don’t understand that, IS.

   It looks like I-912, the gas tax repeal initiative, will be saving us a few bucks at the pump — at the expense of much needed road construction.

I wasn’t particularly opposed to the tax, but was adamantly against how it would be spent. Here on the peninsula our only choices are being taxed on gas in addition to paying outrageous tolls on the new Narrows Bridge, or being gouged by the ferry system. What’s wrong with this picture?

After I-912 repeals the gas tax, the legislature needs to go back to Olympia and get this right. Start with tolling the Alaskan Way Viaduct and the 520 Bridge at the same level as the Narrows, while reallocating revenue so the Narrows Bridge receives the same percentage of state funding as those projects.

   I read where King County Elections Supervisor Dean Logan is spending in excess of $90,000 of public money to evade disclosure of the incompetence and questionable fraud creating the governor’s race fiasco.

Stefan Sharkansky, the blogger who uncovered the King County Elections train wreck, filed a public disclosure request to inspect certain absentee ballot envelopes from last November. Logan denied the request, offering only inspection of copies — using the lame excuse it was necessary to protect the envelopes from “damage and disorganization.”

Long story short, Logan left Sharkansky no choice but to sue and demand copies of all the nearly 600,000 absentee ballots. King County has a standard copying charge of 15 cents per page. That’s $90,000 of public money — all so Logan can keep the cover-up intact.

   Speaking of public disclosure… Kitsap County now has two full-time employees paid with your taxes, doing nothing except fulfilling public disclosure requests from the small group desperately seeking to poison the public process surrounding NASCAR.

I wasn’t surprised finding the “Who We Are” link didn’t work when I visited their Web site — which makes me ask, why they’re hiding that information from the public, while demanding mountains of paper from the county? In spite of all their pompus public blustering, they’ve yet to actually uncover ANY evidence of a criminal conspiracy, or ethical wrongdoing.

Why are they afraid to allow the process to go forward? Maybe Kitsap should just adopt Logan’s lame “damage and disorganization” excuse so those county employees can get back to their real jobs.

   Finally, the hottest selling item in New York right now is reportedly a bumper sticker defining which political party the vehicle owner belongs to. It simply reads, “Run Hillary, Run!”

Democrats are putting them on their rear bumpers. Republicans however, are putting them on their front bumpers.