Seems to me the concept of the government as underfunded is the dangerous part.

Government will always think of itself as underfunded. Because it could do more things with more money, could exercise more power with more employees/officials.

Dan Galloway's medical analogy is flawed.

"I sincerely want to protect and preserve our rights to own property. You might think of governments taking private property for business development as a disease. We need to do something about the pathogen that is causing that disease."

It is more medically analogous to say that government taking private property for business use is their prescribed cure, rather than the disease itself. They see the problem as being state government, unfunded federal mandates, etc. and those problems could rightly be called the disease. The willingness to immorally trample on private property rights for private use and thus bring about a quick fix to temporary funding problems is a cure that is abhorrent to anyone who believes in our fundamental rights as a free people. The use of eminent domain (to further continue the analogy) amounts to radical surgery as opposed to governments swallowing the pill and increasing taxes or cutting services.

Just because there appears, after Kelo, to be a new source of funding open to local municipalities does not mean the political physicians need to begin sharpening their scalpels.

... and (to further the medical analogy) don't forget the application of leeches (in this case the developers and their incestuous and self serving little cabol)

cabol ... cabal ... whateva :)

I thought this was very informative and timely.

Thanks for posting it.

Thanks for the mention of both this important issue and The Basement and the interesting comments.

-Matt

There is, of course, No Cabal. :)

(I managed to misspell Mr Galloway's name; I have corrected any references thereto. Sometimes it pays to be a step ahead of the Spelling Patrol.)

Mike, I appreciated your comments and taking another perspective of the medical analogy. There are many cases of local governments where I would have to agree with you. I do take issue with those who stereotype local governments and characterize them as all vultures, greedy and wasteful. That very concept is why I got into City Management over twenty years ago. I wanted the opportunity to see just how efficiently a city government could be for the least tax burden on the citizens as possible. I think I have done a pretty good job of this in three cities.
Take Bethany for example. We have police and fire departments that are the envy of the metro area. People from throughout the area comment about why Bethany’s streets are in better condition than others. I could go on but that is not the point. Our City also happens to have the lowest tax income per capita for all cities of 10,000 or more in the State. Consequently, our expenditure per capita is also low. We run the City much like a business and have become very efficient That makes it difficult to accept being placed in the stereotypical barrel with the cities that actually fit your stereotype.
The citizens of our community collectively pay over $7.5 million per year in local sales tax. We only collect $3.9 million of that. But, since they live here, they receive no police, fire, streets, parks, etc. for the $3.6 million in local tax they paid in other cities where they shopped. The only way to allow them to pay that three plus million at home for their own police and fire is to have big new stores for them to shop in.
But, our City is fully developed with only two parcels of undeveloped land large enough for a Home Depot, let alone a shopping mall. We do not plan to use eminent domain to solve the problem. But if you understand this scenario you might better understand why a city might revert to that tool. I am not saying that makes it right or wrong. What would you do? Eliminate fire protection? Eliminate police protection? Let streets become broken and unsafe? By the way, here in Oklahoma the only tax we can use at the city level is sales tax.

Hey....wasn't Dan Galloway Raymond Burr's sidekick in "Ironside"? No, wait ...he was the guy with the chimp in the old "Today" show ... no, wait ...

Dan, as a late response to your question:
What would you do? Eliminate fire protection? Eliminate police protection? Let streets become broken and unsafe? By the way, here in Oklahoma the only tax we can use at the city level is sales tax.
I honestly don't know what I would do, but it would never cross my mind to violate my constituents' 5th amendment rights any more than it would occur to me to violate any of their other fundamental rights. What's next? Banning newspapers that criticize the mayor?