What: KBDI Channel 12’s Colorado Inside Out Live

When: Wednesday, February 22nd, 2006 at 8 p.m.

Details: Jessica will join host Peter Boyles and other guests to take your calls on issues related to eminent domain and property rights. Call 303-296-1212.

A civil rights struggle of 21st century
By Jessica Peck Corry

This column originally appeared in the Sunday Denver Post on February 12, 2006.

Property rights aren’t sexy, but the quietly brewing battle over them will likely serve as the defining civil rights struggle of this century.

While Americans frequently consider race, gender or class discrimination as significant barriers to equality, eminent domain abuse - the forcible taking of property for a non-public purpose - should also top this list. When government and corporations force people out of their homes and small businesses, families lose the hard-earned equity from their most important investments, and society loses a tool essential to uplifting our nation’s most vulnerable.

In June 2005, a 5-4 majority of the U.S. Supreme Court embraced, in Kelo vs. New London, the practice of government planners and large corporations clearing out families, small businesses and entire neighborhoods to make way for tax-rich private developments.

While Colorado law provides that eminent domain can only be used for remedying “blight” or “slum” conditions, the Supreme Court’s decision is mobilizing government planners to take homes or businesses across the state in the name of economic development and private gain.

Steve Nadler is one small-business owner living this reality. Nadler is currently under attack by the Sheridan Redevelopment Agency and a private developer who want to turn his business into a massive retail development. Nadler’s case could help set the stage for an essential public dialogue over how and when we allow government to take private property.

Government lobbyists contend eminent domain is necessary to rejuvenate Colorado’s aging neighborhoods. However, they fail to mention that it is only necessary if developers and government want to drive down the value of the properties they are seeking to condemn and redevelop.

Buzz and Peggy Kilker, owners of Buzz’s Auto Body in Aurora, experienced this after the city included their business as part of a blight designation that encompassed the neighborhood surrounding the newly rehabilitated Fitzsimons Health Sciences Center. The Kilkers spent six years fighting off condemnation before the city abandoned the project last year.

“It’s amazing what happens when the free market is forced to work,” Buzz Kilker said. “When they put a blight designation
on the area, they know no one will buy it. When they can’t hold that over your head, it’s a whole different story.”
While the Kilkers narrowly escaped the grasp of eminent domain, others have not been so lucky. Paul Kozik, an elderly Arvada resident, saw his sole source of income, a modest storefront, bulldozed by city planners in 2004 allegedly to make way for a private development. Nearly two years after its demolition, the property is an empty parking lot with the Arvada Urban Renewal Authority desperately soliciting offers for its redevelopment.

A proposed constitutional amendment, if passed by voters in November, would define the acceptable uses of eminent domain in Colorado’s constitution, specifically prohibiting government from taking someone’s home or business for the purpose of turning it over to a private developer for a private business.

Lawmakers also have begun calling for reforms, with Reps. Cory Gardner, Lynn Hefley and Al White and Sen. Tom Wiens all introducing bills to address eminent domain abuse. Gardner’s bill, HB 1099, would prevent governments from taking land to transfer the land to a private party.

As our state continues to grow and the amount of vacant land available for development diminishes, developers and government planners will only find eminent domain more tempting as a tool to bring in lucrative private developments. If we fail to protect property rights, we have missed a key opportunity to empower working families and small-business owners in their pursuit of the American dream.

Jessica Peck Corry, director of the Independence Institute’s Property Rights Project, is the author of “At the Crossroads of Condemnation: The Debate Over Eminent Domain For Private Development & Open Space.”

Visit www.IndependenceInstitute.org for the latest report from the Independence Institute’s Property Rights Project. Titled “At the Crossroads of Condemnation: The Debate Over Condemnation for Private Development & Open Space”, this piece offers a conclusive analysis of recent legislative activity and eminent domain cases across Colorado.

Diversity report assailed

Panelist asks CU president to halt commission’s work

By Sara Burnett, Rocky Mountain News

February 10, 2006

A member of the University of Colorado’s Blue Ribbon Commission on diversity urged CU President Hank Brown on Thursday to halt the group’s work, saying she wants more information on how the $21.7 million allocated to diversity programs this year was spent.
Jessica Peck Corry, director of the campus accountability project for the Independence Institute, a free-market think tank, also said a draft report of recommendations released this week was the work of CU’s diversity office, not commissioners.

“It’s as if (former football coach) Gary Barnett wrote a report about the CU football scandal,” Corry said. “They want a rubber stamp, and they’re not going to get it.”

The commission should take at least a month to review detailed budget information before a final report is written, she added.

Brown said the process is “pretty well on a schedule,” and that he will make sure Corry’s comments are passed along to Chancellor Phil DiStefano, who is expected to provide Brown a report by May 1 on how CU could implement the recommendations.

He also said he appreciates the perspective Corry brings to the table. “Part of this process is to have different views brought forward,” Brown said. “The fact we have a good variety of views, I think, is a good thing.”

Brown appointed the commission to look at diversity programs and ways to increase minority enrollment and retention on all of CU’s campuses.

The group held a daylong meeting on the Boulder campus last month. Its recommendations were turned in to campus staff, who distributed them in a draft report on Tuesday. Commissioners were given two weeks to read the report and respond with any comments.

Among the suggestions were increasing money for diversity programs and minority scholarships, lowering admission standards for more students and issuing a statement that says fostering an inclusive environment is “the highest priority of the university.”

Corry said she disagrees with changing admission standards and that the values statement is “disgusting” because CU’s priority should be educating students.

Former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb, who also sits on the commission, said he didn’t have a problem with the draft report.

He agrees the group could use more time to review spending, but said any such review should be to find more money for diversity programs - not to question their efficacy or try to cut them.

“Diversity programs did not cause these (racial) problems,” Webb said. “That’s like blaming the victim.” Webb also said he doesn’t believe the majority of the commission would support a delay.

“It sends the wrong signal,” he said. “We need to continue to move forward.”

Diversity panel, diverse ideas
CU-Boulder’s blue-ribbon commission suggests adding flexibility to admission standards and making more efforts to promote racial tolerance.
By Jennifer Brown
Denver Post Staff Writer

The University of Colorado should consider building more flexibility into its admission standards to reach more minorities, require freshmen to take a racial-tolerance course and pour more money into diversity programs, a report released Tuesday says.

The Boulder campus also needs a zero-tolerance policy for students caught using hate speech, and administrators should create a “rapid response team” to deal with hate crimes, the report says.

The recommendations come from a 60-member blue- ribbon commission that reviewed the racial makeup of the student body and talked to students about diversity retention. The campus is 1.5 percent African-American, 5.8 percent Latino and 6 percent Asian.

The panel - created by CU president Hank Brown after a string of racist incidents on campus - has two weeks to revise the draft report. The university plans to formally respond by May 1.

Students, administrators and some commission members said they are strongly against CU lowering its admission standards to expand the pool of qualified minority applicants. The report does not advocate lowering standards but says the university should work with the state higher education commission to revise the way the commission develops a student’s index score - a number based on high school class rank, standardized tests and grades. CU requires a minimum index score of 103.

Only 272 black and 1,062 Latino high school graduates were admitted to a state four-year university in 2004 and had the scores to get into CU-Boulder, according to a university report.

“It is unacceptable that there are only 66 African-American students out of approximately 5,000 new freshmen,” the report says.

CU already has some flexibility in the index score, Boulder chancellor Phil DiStefano said. The university can admit up to 14 percent of its students with numbers below the index by considering factors such as leadership or high school coursework.

But the higher education commission is shrinking that window. It was 20 percent in 2003 and will drop to 10 percent in 2008, a move that has raised concerns in the past regarding flexibility in recruiting student athletes.

More minority students would qualify to get into CU if the index score were more flexible and accounted for students who grow up without tutoring or preparation for college entrance exams, said the Rev. Paul Burleson, a panel member.

“We can come up with something creative that does not undermine the qualifications of the school,” he said.

But panel member Jessica Peck Corry with the conservative Independence Institute called that recommendation ridiculous. “CU is a top research institution, and it should attract the best and the brightest,” she said. “We shouldn’t lower standards to allow for some social engineering.”

Corry also disagreed with the panel’s No. 1 recommendation, that CU should increase funding for diversity programs. The university, which has an estimated $21 million for diversity programs, hasn’t proved those programs are working, she said.

Others suggested that instead of changing admission standards, CU pour more resources into recruiting qualified minority students. The panel suggested increasing scholarship funding for underserved populations.

“They should reach out to K-12 students, make the idea of going to college actually seem more real,” said panel member Jarvis Fuller, vice president of the Black Student Alliance.

CU should consider expanding programs that recruit students from community colleges who might not have qualified for CU admission as freshmen, said CU regent Gail Schwartz. Lowering admission standards is not an acceptable option, she said.

“It runs contrary to our wanting success for all students coming to the institution,” she said. “We shouldn’t be motivated to take an underqualified student just to fill numbers.”

The recommendation that freshmen take a mandatory class on multiculturalism also drew mixed opinions.

“We feel that class, along with many other diversity classes, only seeks to continue to divide students by race instead of trying to include everybody,” said Ian VanBuskirk, chairman of the College Republicans.

DiStefano said administrators already are researching the possibility of a required diversity course, which students angry about the racial environment on campus requested last fall.

Staff writer Jennifer Brown can be reached at 303-820-1593 or jenbrown@denverpost.com.