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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

>And they have done so often with voter agreement. 

All the more reason why the Kelo decision is so horrendously bad.  
Constitutional guarantees were established for the very purpose of not 
letting those 
rights be determined by mob rule.  In another recent court decision based on 
finding that two Kentucky counties were illegally promoting a religion, given 
to 
local option and local determination, those counties would be a sort of 
Christian Taliban if it were not for constitutional restraints.  The locals 
would 
gladly vote fundamentalist Christianity as the recognized only county 
religion 
and base all their laws upon it.  

One of the things the constitution does is keep local governments from voting 
away your rights, at least until Kelo, that is.  What happens when all the 
property being condemned for economic reasons just happens to be owned by 
Hispanics or just happens to be owned by Catholics or some such?  Under Kelo 
the 
definition of what is an economic plan is entirely up to the local government.

>I see it as a clarification and a SCOTUS directive that municipal 
>authorities must have a well-reasoned plan. Heretofore, cities have taken 
>more easily
(and)
> I quoted the passage earlier that persuades me differently.

I read that passage too and at first I was mollified.  But that passage is a 
description of the case before the court, not part of the criteria the court 
set for taking property.  O'Connor in the minority opinion said:

" In moving away from our decisions sanctioning the condemnation of harmful 
property use, the Court today significantly expands the meaning of public 
use. 
It holds that the sovereign may take private property currently put to 
ordinary private use, and give it over for new, ordinary private use, so long 
as the 
new use is predicted to generate some secondary benefit for the public--such 
as increased tax revenue, more jobs, maybe even aesthetic pleasure. But 
nearly 
any lawful use of real private property can be said to generate some 
incidental benefit to the public. Thus, if predicted (or even guaranteed) 
positive 
side-effects are enough to render transfer from one private party to another 
constitutional, then the words "for public use" do not realistically exclude 
any 
takings, and thus do not exert any constraint on the eminent domain power."

Not especially the wording: "... do not realistically exclude any takings.."

Most legal commentators in the wake of Kelo have opined that New London's 
development plan is incidental since the same way that 'public use' is being 
left 
up to local interpretation, so is the concept of 'comprehensive plan'.   If a 
local government wants to condemn your house so that a contractor can build a 
bigger house just on your lot, the Kelo decision covers that.  

James