The state of Texas has countless leases with real estate owners across the state. Pursuing eminent domain at the expiration of a government lease creates a challenging precedent for property owners who lease to state agencies, and for future real estate transactions related to these leases.
Further, allowing this precedent could lead to attempts at similar overreach with eminent domain by other state agencies in the future.With the commission’s vote, the state is authorizing not only eminent domain over the 1,821 acres of land formerly leased to the state of Texas, but also an additional 3,200 acres of land and surface water and water rights, which are privately owned and have never been part of the state’s lease.
According to a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department press release, the commission also instructed TPWD Executive Director David Yoskowitz toto restrict the agency’s use of eminent domain to extraordinary and unusual situations. The transaction in Freestone County was neither extraordinary nor unusual but a matter of private property ownership and the right to conduct marketplace business.
This vote to apply eminent domain will set a standard that could have far-reaching and long-lasting consequences, and drafting a policy that prevents this type of action once the vote has already been taken is not acceptable.
Linda McMahon is the president and CEO of The Real Estate Council, the largest commercial real estate organization in Texas, representing more than 2,000 members and 650 member companies. She wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.We welcome your thoughts in a letter to the editor. See the guidelines and