News Update
Landowners' liaison: Texas Farm Bureau helps change eminent domain process with S.B. 18
Chris Beattie/Staff Photo - Kenneth Dierschke, president of the Texas Farm Bureau, speaks to the McKinney Rotary Club about Senate Bill 18 on Friday in the ballroom at Rick's Chophouse in downtown McKinney. The bill, which went into effect Sept. 1, provides more protection for Texas landowners in situations regarding eminent domain.
By Chris Beattie,cbeattie@acnpapers.com
The Texas Farm Bureau may have saved landowners a lot of heartache, and members of the McKinney Rotary Club are some of the first to know.
Kenneth Dierschke, president of the TFB, spoke at the club's weekly meeting Friday in the ballroom at Rick's Chophouse in downtown McKinney. Dierschke, a fourth-generation Texas farmer, shared about the political fight that TFB put up in recent years in Austin to challenge the state's eminent domain laws.
Members of TFB from 206 Texas counties pushed on the desks of state legislators a bill that protects private property owners from the government's unwarranted or unfair seizure of their land for government projects. After three legislative sessions, the Texas Legislature finally passed Senate Bill (SB) 18 in May, and it officially went into effect Sept. 1.
"Texas is a private property state," Dierschke said. "Senate Bill 18 isn't a perfect bill, but it will make a condemner who wants to come take your property make you a fair offer."
Dierschke, who lives and grows cotton in San Angelo and works in Waco, is a good friend of McKinney Rotary member and fellow TFB member, Frank Walker, Sr. They traveled to Cuba together on TFB missions to promote Texas-grown exports.
Other Rotary regulars didn't know Dierschke, but by the end of his presentation, they realized the significance of SB 18. Ideas highlighted in the bill were spurred on by the 2004 Supreme Court case, Kelo v. City of New London, through which the Court ruled that government entities could take private property for governmental use, Dierschke said.
"Boy, that struck a chord with us," he said. "That's what set us off."
Further development of the bill resulted from the state's planning for the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC), an idea the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) first proposed about eight years ago. The envisioned transportation network would have stretched across Texas about 4,600 miles of tollways that were more than 1,000 feet wide. Dierschke said that the project would have covered almost 7 million acres of state land.
"It was going to be a really great plan," he said, "except they forgot that there were people in Texas who didn't want to get run over."
Farmers, ranchers and private property owners were in danger of the previous eminent domain statutes allowing the state to bully them off their land. So, during the past three state legislative sessions, TFB members brought to elected officials their ideas for making a fairer process.
Under SB 18, private property can only be condemned for the state's public use, and eminent domain entities such as cities and municipalities must register with the Texas Comptroller's Office by December 2012, or lost that power. Landowners must be compensated for any loss of direct access to their property, must receive relocation assistance when they're forced to move and must be provided fair appraisals during negotiations over their land.
"All of these things were not developed in our Waco office," Dierschke said. "They were developed out in the places where people are actually going to be affected by these things."
Though the bill was basically shuffled around during the previous two legislative sessions, it passed without opposition earlier this year. The TFB is already working on a 2012 farm bill, which Dierschke said will help protect food, fiber and fuel supplies in Texas.
Also at the Rotary club meeting was Don Reed, TFB agriculture program coordinator for Collin County and six other counties. The Collin County Farm Bureau, which has its office off U.S. 380, has more than 12,000 members.
"Right here, the stuff that runs up and down 75 used to be farms, and it's all covered up now," Reed said. "North of 380, there's still a ton of agriculture."
Those areas -- specifically the farmers and ranchers living in them -- are why the TFB exists. Dierschke emphasized that the TFB is not against transportation and development and that it does more than devise bills for the Legislature. The bureau gave about $1 million to volunteer fire departments across the state in recent weeks so they could better fight the persistent wildfires.
But its members are likely most proud of their own fight to keep the power of eminent domain under control and the rights of landowners well intact.
"The Trans-Texas Corridor is dead, and the Texas Farm Bureau is largely responsible for that," Dierschke said. "Texas politics is sometimes a contact sport, but usually, when you're through with it, you all come out singing the same song."
Kenneth Dierschke, president of the TFB, spoke at the club's weekly meeting Friday in the ballroom at Rick's Chophouse in downtown McKinney. Dierschke, a fourth-generation Texas farmer, shared about the political fight that TFB put up in recent years in Austin to challenge the state's eminent domain laws.
Members of TFB from 206 Texas counties pushed on the desks of state legislators a bill that protects private property owners from the government's unwarranted or unfair seizure of their land for government projects. After three legislative sessions, the Texas Legislature finally passed Senate Bill (SB) 18 in May, and it officially went into effect Sept. 1.
"Texas is a private property state," Dierschke said. "Senate Bill 18 isn't a perfect bill, but it will make a condemner who wants to come take your property make you a fair offer."
Dierschke, who lives and grows cotton in San Angelo and works in Waco, is a good friend of McKinney Rotary member and fellow TFB member, Frank Walker, Sr. They traveled to Cuba together on TFB missions to promote Texas-grown exports.
Other Rotary regulars didn't know Dierschke, but by the end of his presentation, they realized the significance of SB 18. Ideas highlighted in the bill were spurred on by the 2004 Supreme Court case, Kelo v. City of New London, through which the Court ruled that government entities could take private property for governmental use, Dierschke said.
"Boy, that struck a chord with us," he said. "That's what set us off."
Further development of the bill resulted from the state's planning for the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC), an idea the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) first proposed about eight years ago. The envisioned transportation network would have stretched across Texas about 4,600 miles of tollways that were more than 1,000 feet wide. Dierschke said that the project would have covered almost 7 million acres of state land.
"It was going to be a really great plan," he said, "except they forgot that there were people in Texas who didn't want to get run over."
Farmers, ranchers and private property owners were in danger of the previous eminent domain statutes allowing the state to bully them off their land. So, during the past three state legislative sessions, TFB members brought to elected officials their ideas for making a fairer process.
Under SB 18, private property can only be condemned for the state's public use, and eminent domain entities such as cities and municipalities must register with the Texas Comptroller's Office by December 2012, or lost that power. Landowners must be compensated for any loss of direct access to their property, must receive relocation assistance when they're forced to move and must be provided fair appraisals during negotiations over their land.
"All of these things were not developed in our Waco office," Dierschke said. "They were developed out in the places where people are actually going to be affected by these things."
Though the bill was basically shuffled around during the previous two legislative sessions, it passed without opposition earlier this year. The TFB is already working on a 2012 farm bill, which Dierschke said will help protect food, fiber and fuel supplies in Texas.
Also at the Rotary club meeting was Don Reed, TFB agriculture program coordinator for Collin County and six other counties. The Collin County Farm Bureau, which has its office off U.S. 380, has more than 12,000 members.
"Right here, the stuff that runs up and down 75 used to be farms, and it's all covered up now," Reed said. "North of 380, there's still a ton of agriculture."
Those areas -- specifically the farmers and ranchers living in them -- are why the TFB exists. Dierschke emphasized that the TFB is not against transportation and development and that it does more than devise bills for the Legislature. The bureau gave about $1 million to volunteer fire departments across the state in recent weeks so they could better fight the persistent wildfires.
But its members are likely most proud of their own fight to keep the power of eminent domain under control and the rights of landowners well intact.
"The Trans-Texas Corridor is dead, and the Texas Farm Bureau is largely responsible for that," Dierschke said. "Texas politics is sometimes a contact sport, but usually, when you're through with it, you all come out singing the same song."
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