You know the league is known to start the event at six exactly on time because we believe we need to honor those who come on time rather than those who come late. So we will start the event and also because the library will be closing at eight o'clock and we want to have plenty of opportunity to ask questions and answers. I am Madhu Sridhar, the president of the League of Human Voters of San Antonio area and on behalf of the league I welcome each and every one of you for joining us this evening for an important subject which I think I don't know I haven't found an expert on this subject besides the panelists and our moderator so we are all in here to get ourselves educated which is the mission of the league informed and active participation of citizens to increase the understanding of major public policy issues and influence public policy through education and advocacy. So with that in mind we had organized this forum and this forum was organized by the program committee and I will ask Elaine Tulaski who is the VP of programs and action committee to come and introduce the moderator and talk a little bit about the program this evening. Thank you. Can you hear me? Our moderator for this panel discussion is Mr. Charles Gonzalez is someone I think many of you know he was former member of Congress. He received his BA from the University of Texas in 1969 and a JD from St. Mary's University in 1972 and he was licensed to practice law in 1972 and served in private practice until 1982 and then 1982 he was elected to the judge of County Court too and served until 1987 and then in 1988 he was selected judge of the 57th state judicial court and served until 1997. In 1998 he was elected to the US House of Representatives and served until 2013. During his tenure in Congress he was assigned to the committees on financial services, energy and commerce, judiciary, small business, house administration and homeland security. He is currently a counsel of counsel with the Ogletree Deakins Law Firm and he's also a very active in the community in civic and professional organizations. Just before I give the final introduction I want to remind you that you were given a card to so you can write questions and they will be collected towards the end of the discussion. If you didn't get a card just raise your hand and we will get one too. It is now my pleasure to introduce our moderator Charles Gonzalez. Elaine, thank you very much. It's a real pleasure to be able to moderate this panel discussion. I know as we were saying sometimes I'm in a domain may not get the attention of a lot of people but believe me it is important and becoming increasingly more important as we proceed with public policy and the rights of individuals and the ownership of their property and their rights. What I'm going to do is I'm going to introduce the individual members of the panel in the order that you see them now and then of course we're going to be getting into some opening remarks but I'll give you the format in a minute. We start off with Cassie Gresham who has practiced law with Braun and Gresham since 2004. She has dedicated her law practice to protecting the rights of property owners. She has a BA degree from the University of Mississippi and a law degree from UT. She was instrumental in bringing about the historic Dalestrom Ranch Conservation easement. A rare collaboration, I love the word collaboration since we have so little of it today, among a private landowner, a federal agency, a county and a city to protect drinking water and to create a public open space. Thank you for joining us tonight. Next Cassie is Britain Bostic. She is a principal with stewardship strategies. A firm that consults in the areas of design, planning, historic preservation, economic development and conservation. She has a bachelor's and science degree in environmental design from Texas A&M, a master of science degree in community and regional planning and a master's in public affairs from UT Austin. So we have an Aggie and Longhorn all wrapped up in wine. Next to Britain is Marissa Patton is a graduate of Texas Tech University and works in the Texas Foreign Bureau's legislative office. She advocates on behalf of the bureau's members on issues related to eminent domain, agricultural commodities, wildlife affairs and land use. She previously has worked for United States Senator John Cornyn, who is the San Antonio native and the Texas Southwestern Cattle Razors Association. During the 2017 state legislative session, she advocated against legislation weakening common carrier pipeline laws and continues to play an active role in efforts to improve eminent domain laws on behalf of Texas property owners. Thank you very much, Britain. I said Britain, I apologize. And last but of course never least because he is an elected official so you know I feel your pain. The honorable Michael Carpenter is serving his third term as mayor of shirts. Prior to his election as mayor, he served on the Shirt City Council from 2005 to 2011. He has an associate's degree in paralegal studies from Southwest Tennessee Community College, a bachelor's degree in liberal studies from the University of Memphis, a master's in clinical psychology from St. Mary's and a master's degree in business administration from Webster University. Presently, he is chairman of the Northeast Partnership for Economic Development as well as president of Region 7 of the Texas Municipal League. Thank you very much, Mayor. I think Elaine kind of told you how we were going to do this but what we're going to have is each panel member and we'll start with Cassie. We'll have five to ten minutes to make an opening statement and cover information that they believe. We'll kind of set the groundwork of the foundation for what follows as far as what will be probably a pretty lively discussion. I said five to ten minutes. Cards have been handed out for you to submit written questions so please and then I would, I will collect them and then I'll direct them to the individual panelists to whom they're addressed or to the entire panel and also panel members even though one may be addressed to a particular panel member, feel free to comment after their remarks. So why don't we start with an opening, I want to say opening statement like this is in court. I cannot get away from it. Sounds good, thank you. Well thank you all for having me here. I represent owners of rural land and what the owners of rural land and probably comment on tonight are faced with a lot of condemnation or imminent domain challenges. If you own land in Texas you're seeing the state change and this is in a conversation a few days ago and we were talking about well what does it mean to be a rural land owner in Texas and really you can be someone who lives in an urban area but owns rural land that's how Texas is changing. We don't have a lot of just rural landowners anymore. A lot of our population lives in Dallas, Houston or Austin or San Antonio but they own ranches and how I've seen that change in my practice is infrastructure. There's a lot of people that are moving to Texas and Texas is growing and so what is happening is we have to build the infrastructure to support that growth and that change and that is occurring across open faith lands and we are seeing that from power line routing where there's a process in which those are routed at the public utility commission and we participate in that. We're seeing that with roads. What is interesting is we're seeing that with water and our firm has done a lot of legislative efforts on water that I can go into some detail about but what I'm seeing with landowners and what I think is an under addressed issue in the state is that we are delegating the authority of eminent domain or condemnation to private companies. So when a landowner when when Transmission Line property when a Transmission Line is going to cross a landowner's property it is no longer being condemned by the public utility commission that has people that are accountable to elected voters it's a private company that that condemns that property and goes through that process with the landowner the right of way agents are with the private company and I can tell you being on the landowner side it's very different dealing with a public official and someone who is elected versus someone who has the profit. So we're seeing that with water we're seeing it with electricity so any of our utilities a lot of them are we're giving that right away and the reason why we did that in the past is because in order to develop rural land in Texas we didn't have the infrastructure that was there so this still happens it happens in Bolverde and it happens in go forth and it happens in any area in which we're building new homes to support all the people that are moving here we've got to provide those utilities electricity water all those things that are that we need in order to live our home and I'm not suggesting that's a bad thing I'm just saying the way our legislature has set it up and is we'll we actually create the developer can create a municipal utility district and it's a quasi-governmental entity and that quasi-governmental entity has the power of condemnation but across the state it's just going there's like videos about this and articles about this but just go google municipal utility district when you go home and you'll see lots of information about it but what we've done what our legislature's done what we've done as citizens of the state is not question that we think we can provide the infrastructure that's needed for these homes without really questioning how it's being done and I've seen that work I've had horror stories for what that's done for my clients and the landers and how they've had to fight to maintain their property rights and and so at the beginning Mr. Gonzalez was saying that you know I I also have a practice where I help protect open-space land and I did work on this big private public partnership to help a ranch be conserved and and we're now working on a public park on that on that portion so I've been on the I've been on the open-space side of trying to save land and I've also been on the condemnation side and I can tell you that it's pretty intimidating from the landowner perspective I had a a client call in he's a client now he wasn't a client on Friday but there were there were two landowners that called in on Friday and they got a temporary injunction which means there was a hearing set for Tuesday tomorrow where they were going to go to court and have and the judge was going to force them to let that utility company on to survey their land and they were freaking out because they don't know they get this in the mail they don't know what they're supposed to do and you know we told them hey you got to let them on the land to survey they're allowed to do that they're going to win this temporary injunction but let us help you out because we know the attorney on the other side we've negotiated a lot of these agreements so let us call and pull down the hearings so you don't have to get a court but those sort of intimidation tactics that sort of not communicating with landowners on the condemnation side this was a private company not a public it was in a city it wasn't a county it was a a utility company that was going after the ci and and that can be really scary for landowners so our job is to is to provide information lay out that process help them through that do a good job advocating for them help them get the most money if their property is condemned but you know what I see in the future of what's happening in the in the state is we're going to have to wrestle with those issues as the state is growing how do we provide the infrastructure that we all need and one we want to have lights that turn on but how do we balance that against the Texas open spaces that we've loved for so long that's going to change and we're going to have to find out how to how do our rural interests and our urban interests how do the suburban interests go inside I don't think we figured that out as citizens yet or in the legislature yet but that's something that we're working on I don't know how many minutes I okay I'll hand it over I'm Britain I am from a long time Texas ranching family so I grew up if y'all know where mountain home is not a lot of people are interested in mountain home let's be honest not even today with the growth that Texas has or is anybody really interested in mountain home yet but you know I grew up on a very large ranch very large acreage with a ranching family and my great grandparents were so thrilled when they did get electricity Texans were thrilled to get electricity and then everybody else figured out now that the state's air conditioned this is a really great place to be but back in the good old days before all those roads were built and all those utilities were there they had to rough it out the middle of nothing and so you know kind of later on as I've gone through more degrees than I probably needed and a lot of education the hard way I've kind of come back around to these whole country issues and what I see and I think Cassie what you're saying you see is that a lot of times landowners don't have the information that they need for this to be a balanced process so I've got very dear friends who have had eminent domain enforced against them through the TransCanada pipeline the Keystone XL goes straight through my friend Julia's ranch in northeast Texas I have a very good friend that lives down the road for me we've known them for years and his part of his property was taken to build a road in Williamson County that never got built and he's hesitated to build his dream home on his land because he doesn't know what the county may or may not try to take from him to build this road that may or may not ever happen and so we get into these situations that become not really what we maybe think eminent domain is for and the last time I looked there were over 6900 condemning entities in the state of Texas we're not talking about just cities and counties we're talking about the municipal utility districts that you talked about some school districts have it and increasingly that is being handed off and so you have all these different organizations of various types that have the ability to say we need this property for this purpose and instead of it being a negotiated sale it's they do their homework they hire their attorneys they hire their engineers they hire their planners their accountants whoever they need to hire and a landowner is suddenly hit with notice that they've got condemnation proceedings against them and if you've never experienced this before never really know anybody who's gone through it you have a very short window of time to respond and so if we were talking about negotiated land sales that would be one thing but we're not we're talking about very suddenly you're being notified that your property is probably going to be taken from you and so you can imagine that puts people in a very intimidating situation they're required to provide you with what's called the Texas Landowner Bill of Rights but that's not really telling you the whole story so I want to highlight a couple of things that I think are really important to know and I'm a League member I'm part of the Austin chapter I serve as the thank you I serve as the transportation issue chair for the state of Texas League of Women Voters which means I get to watch transportation bills uh as they go through the legislature every two years and and let the the state some people very smarter than me who know how to do something with what I tell them I just watch bills go by but we're starting to see eminent domain enter transportation territory and so you know kind of what do people need to know and you need to know about the process I have some colleagues up in Georgetown they own a company called Eagle Wealth Management they're financial advisors they're not attorneys they're not CPAs they're brothers who have found in advising their clients and what to do with their money over time they've seen a lot of their clients have eminent domain enforced against them all over the state they've got clients in Central Texas and West Texas we're seeing a lot of eminent domain used in Williamson County because Williamson County is really on to building roads right now they want roads here they're in everywhere and in order to build the roads they need the land to do it and sometimes people's property is in the way of where they want a road to go so they make that happen but uh what you might not know and what they have found and we were discussing the other day is they said you know a lot of people don't understand you would expect to have capital gains taxes assessed against you maybe if you sold the land by choice but a lot of people don't understand you're going to have to pay capital gains if you have an eminent domain payment if you have a condemnation payment so imagine this you're getting hit with this is what we're going to pay you for for what you're we think your land is worth which there are a lot of opinions about that some people side it's not what the land is worth it's it's lower and some people say it's fair there's others a lot of room for debate in there I'm on the land is worth more side I'll be clear about that but so say your land is bought for what it's maybe not actually worth and then you're assessed 20 to 30 percent of that from the IRS so your valuation is is really decreased by that point and uh so there's a form it's a 1033 form that you can essentially use to defer taxes on that but most of the accountants that they've talked to nobody that I have ever talked to knows that there is a 1033 that you can use to help mitigate the taxes that you're going to have to pay on that and that's why landowner education is so important because if you don't know to tell your accountant hey do you know about a 1033 I don't know anything about that but you know tax stuff so you can find that form and you can figure this out we're finding accountants don't know we're finding that some attorneys don't know who are trying to help people make the decisions they need to make and not have to kind of be hit twice with this that's one um the other that I was kind of recently introduced to did you all see the movie the little pink house has anybody seen this film it's it's very it's out very recently I almost cried it was so good but there's a very historic kind of landmark eminent domain case and it's kilo versus the city of new London it's a story of the woman with the little pink house who tried to fight when Pfizer was going to locate and they never built anything where they tore her house down and said there's a documentary about it essentially and uh and it's it's really compelling and it's also showing a lot of the behind the scenes and I was watching this movie and thinking oh no surely and then I thought no actually that kind of malarkey does go on because you know they have a plan this is what we're going to do we're going to bring in jobs whatever the reason is and there are some very valid reasons for why we need things to operate a certain way so I'm not a total anti eminent domain or I just don't think it needs to be abused I think we need to operate within a very clear system of guidelines I don't think 6900 entities in Texas probably need to have that power and be able to exercise it and um so what what kind of came up after this movie and I was talking to these colleagues with mine in Georgetown is there's kind of a new way of taking things that you don't have to use eminent domain but I think it's something to be kind of having the back of your mind as far as here's how we start kind of creeping into who owns what and has what kind of right so I uh I work with a number of property owners who have lands in in kind of increasingly busy areas and again we want to build these roads so that we can get here in there and everywhere uh you know I-35 we're going to be working on that forever right so we all kind of expect that's going to be a mess but these small county roads that used to be some farm traffic you know your neighbor with their horse trailer and maybe occasionally a kid on an ATV is now pretty busy because there's a subdivision or you know and these very narrow roads that people are trying to travel with more and more traffic so what we're starting to see now is when someone goes to get land subdivided or combined parcels you have to get that it's a plat it's called a plat anytime you want to combine or subdivide property if you're in a city you usually have to get approval by city council if you're in a county you usually have to get approval by the county commissioners court so um pretty pretty kind of straightforward except that we're starting to see them want well if we're going to approve this plat we want to see a dedication of a 50 foot ride away basically you give us part of your land for our purposes and then we will approve so it's a weird kind of a situation because you don't really want to tell the government entity no i'm not going to do that because they just said if you do this i will approve your plat well you want them to approve your plat so if you don't have somebody if you don't have that experience and kind of know that that's that they're they don't really have any business requesting that um if you if you don't know that and if the person that maybe you've hired to draw up this plat doesn't know that you're really getting into a situation of you may be handing over things that you don't have to hand over not knowing that so i think that brings us back to information and education is so important because if we don't know kind of the full scope of what this looks like it's really hard to have good advocacy for good public policy policy that again balance this this because again there are really valid reasons for using eminent domain there are very valid reasons for landowners protecting their private property and if if everyone's got better information that's a better situation than that being kind of the one-sided case that tends to be at the moment well thank you so much for having me um britain you just kind of hit the nail on the head as far as one huge component um in addition in uh texas farm bureau's opinion uh that would be very helpful for eminent domain is certainly education uh for landowners uh but we're trying in one of our big efforts lately within texas farm bureau as far as what we do to advocate um on behalf of our membership and their in their private property rights is to really put the pressure on the texas legislature to improve laws that protect and strengthen private property rights under eminent domain or with instances of the potential use of eminent domain by companies or the government that has that power um of course texas farm bureau is very active in private property right fights whether that be groundwater or eminent domain uh they were a big part of the big push during 2011 i believe which passed senate bill 18 which kind of got us started uh but we definitely have a lot of room to improve and uh we're going to be attempting that once again at this coming legislative session um in 2019 uh two session or i guess the last session we formed two years ago texas farm bureau texas wildlife association and texas southwestern cattle raisers association formed a coalition called texas for property rights in order to push for uh these legislative changes and what we're what we're trying to get at are meaningful meaningful statutory changes that's going to protect with several of the of the major abuses that we're we've been hearing about now we constantly hear from our members and landowners throughout the state um who have experience with eminent domain or with companies who have the power of eminent domain and the really the gripe list is too long is too long to go into but overall and in general some of the main things that we can continue to hear about as far as abuses go um i have to do with lowball offers being being uh offered or even compensated uh not fairly for what the land should be valued uh poor or unfair easement terms or contract terms under which and under which the process is going to go down and of course that contract details the handling of that property odor and their land throughout the the life of the easement which is forever and um just the overall lack of balance in the process and how it all comes together definitely from the standpoint of landowners they feel like even though we have been given uh this landowner bill of rights that's supposed to be given to them whenever they're approached by a company with the power of eminent domain that isn't quite that doesn't quite do do the trick there needs to be more protections more safeguards in place we absolutely want to protect the right to self-defense and hiring up an attorney if that's necessary there's also a process to where the landowner can go through a special commissioners hearing however in order to even get to that point they have to be sued so really a lot of the a lot of the frustrations go back down to what we hear that landowners feel intimidated and a lot of times they are intimidated not just they feel that way by the process but these um some of the companies know what they're getting into and have some landmen who understand and know how to uh get the deal signed on the back porch so to speak that's not always the case there are plenty of good actors out there but there are some known bad actors who mistreat landowners and um some who even threaten them with with that ability to condemn uh just with the conversation about their first offer and the initial uh contract terms which shouldn't ever take place in the first place whatsoever um so as a coalition we try to come together and figure out some legislative solutions and what those might look like um of course it has to do with whenever we're talking about compensation how do we determine the proper way to value land and we have gone back and forth and back and forth on ideas with that and it's so difficult because a lot of property in most Texas property is all so unique it's all so different there's not a there's not a one size fits all formula that you can find to just determine the the fair amount for the easement that should be paid or the fair amount for the for the property that's being taken um another one that we got actually pretty far with last session is um having kind of not necessarily a standard set of contract terms or easement terms uh but something close to it something that gives landowners some property right protections without having to negotiate for them and a lot of that is just the obvious closing gates behind them when the when there's some construction companies are coming onto the property uh maintaining the um easement right of way as far as just the upkeep um making sure that some of the the uh construction staff can or stick to whichever side of the property that the project is going across we've had landowners have having caught um some construction workers completely on the opposite ends of their property on a game camera or something like that which which doesn't even make sense that they would be over there there's a variety of things insurance making sure the landowner uh is not held uh responsible for any injuries just basic stuff like that that typically if you bargain for it landowners can get it sometimes usually that's the case we hear uh but that should just be kind of automatic um for the most part the majority of landowners majority of our membership understand the need for imminent domain they don't like it they don't want it but it's a necessary evil that we have to deal with we just want to make sure that the laws um set forth the necessary protections uh to to to offend off that abuse or any potential abuse um the legislature right now is um studying the issue of imminent domain the house land and resource management committee is having some hearings they had one back may night in houston uh definitely not where we wanted to be uh having a hearing but we understood and we showed up for that one um what we heard the majority of um condemners discuss is that this isn't a problem we have extremely low condemnation rates we have extremely low condemnation rates unfortunately there was there was not the follow-up question asked as to why well a lot of that has to do with the landowners having a fear of of going up against private companies and their teams of attorneys um a lot of that also is because they know to hold out into the very last second and some landowners can't last that long or don't last that long unfortunately as far as negotiating the proper terms or the proper um compensation um and so there was there was a little bit of frustration after that hearing when we are just wondering why these legislators didn't know to go ahead and take that next step and ask that next question and we're in their offices now having those conversations with them making sure they understand that it's not necessarily about those those rates being low it's about what happens uh before that why are there ever offers being given to landowners that are unnecessarily low why are landowners having to fight and negotiate and and uh uh really try for these easement terms that should just be automatic so there are a variety of things that we're going to be looking at next session in order to try and make these improvements again and so we hope everybody can kind of help us follow along with Texans for Property Rights um or Facebook and Twitter and uh we're going to be getting the coalition back involved and uh work on some legislative changes for next session hopefully thank you well so uh first of all thanks uh to the League of Women Voters for inviting me to be here this evening congressman thank you very much and and for my fellow panelists who have so far been very very kind in um in the use of their language with with what goes on with this uh and let me go ahead and address a couple of other things uh it is true I did some graduate work clinical psychology so I can tell you right now that my dry mouth and sweaty palms are for good reason and then secondly uh is anybody else in the room who has voted to take land from someone who didn't belong to you and use it for a project that they didn't want that project to be done just me okay great so uh we have that out on the table so a couple a couple of thoughts um the first one is is I did I think I did hear all three of my fellow panelists talk about there is a proper place for uh for eminent domain but it has to be and needs to be and necessarily should be very very limited um I'll give you an example of one that that we're facing right now in the city of Shirts um we we exist in three counties so we exist in Komal County in Guadalupe County and in Bear County uh most of the development that's going on in the city of Shirts in Bear County is more rural in nature half acre acre five acre ten acre homesteads if you will um and for most of those because there's no sanitary sewer everything is on a septic that's okay for a while but as landowners begin to sell and developers come in and wish to develop on the land that they purchased it's not really tenable in the long term to continuously add septic after septic after septic tank and so we have to do work to provide a sanitary sewer system in my mind that's probably one of the few legitimate reasons for the use of eminent domain for bringing water to an area uh for providing electricity as you talked about in the Hill Country um and for basic types of support it makes sense um I'll tell you that I ran into a very interesting we'll call it maybe a conundrum recently with a city that borders with Shirts and I will make every effort not to mention their name uh because I don't want them to be too mad at me again uh but they um they signed a deal with a private company to have a uh a road built a toll road road built in their city limits and in their agreement they basically they said that they would use their power of eminent domain for whatever takings were necessary uh to have this road built by a private company and uh as I looked at that agreement and and again not going to pass judgment on on my city that's next door but to me the idea that there would be a a taking uh for the purposes of developing a piece of infrastructure that would be privately owned and was developed for profit uh is at the other end of the spectrum of what eminent domain shouldn't be and what it shouldn't be used for um and I got into a little bit of an argument with them because they had went to the uh to text dot and said hey when we get to the city of Shirts we want tax dot to give us that section of of FM 1103 that's in Shirts so that we can have that tollway go all the way from interstate 10 to 35 um and they um and we found out about it later so uh my council and a unanimous vote said that the uh the toll road and the takings stopped at the city limits of the city of Shirts so that was um that was a wonderful thing now let let me go back a little bit to the southern side of Shirts is in bear county where we're having the challenges with the sanitary sewer and having needing to provide that service my council is so um and I don't want to call them anti eminent domain but so cautious about exercising that particular function of government that I couldn't even get a unanimous vote to do survey work to look at putting in a sanitary sewer system I got a split vote for even taking a look at establishing the path for providing sanitary sewer so there is and there are good political subdivisions and good political bodies out there uh to the point that I think I heard each of the my fellow panelists make they're also unscrupulous entities and entities that have eminent domain power that do not consist of exclusively electives that are responsible to those that they live around um and that is problematic as well um and I usually don't say I'm nearly this much wow this is this is fun at the local level in a municipality or an accounting particularly in those that are not as populous as others the folks that we may be saying we're going to take land from or land rights from are our neighbors and they will see us in HEB and they will see us in Lowe's and one of them my good friend Timmy and I won't say his last name sees me in church and says you guys are really gonna take that much off the front of my lot you're gonna kill the business that I have on the front there and only leave me with my storage business come on really um and it's uh it's your neighbors it's not an easy thing it's not a fun thing and it's something we try to do sparingly that's within the city limits and and maybe my fellow panelists will have some commentary on this there's also in addition to an in a mud municipal utility district there are also local government corporations so the city of shirts in partnership with the city of Sageen put together the shirts again local government corporation we bring our own water in from the Carrizo Wilcox we don't use Edward's water except in times of emergency or frankly if we have to because of peak use times there's also the Cibolo Valley local government corporation a partnership between the city of Cibolo and city of shirts and we are as those entities engaged in building water lines and takings that are outside of our city limits sometimes outside of our county our primary county and in that case there is a little bit of a distance and it is a little bit of a different feel if you will however most of us that are in public office can be found rather easily and those folks from those nearby counties and cities that are affected tend to seek us out and and have have their their conversations with us about their feelings particularly about why don't you just go around the the border of my land between here and there and yes absolutely we'll have those conversations and it does get down sometimes to a what is most practical from an engineering standpoint you know what is most cost effective in the end so it's a delicate balance I think for the the scrupulous bodies that have the right to exercise this thing we call eminent domain and being judicious and and trying to be fair and then dealing with your neighbors and and bodies that don't act in a scrupulous fashion and that do things for profit or do things for reasons other than a legitimate public need of course now you probably weren't going to try to get in front of the legislature and say can you help us define a little better what is a legitimate public need because right now it's pretty wide you can just about fit the whole state of Texas through the definition but it's it's not as hard a conversation when it's a waterline it's not as hard a conversation when it's a sanitary sewer line but if it involves anything and particularly in the kilo case if there's a taking for private development for the development of profit that's not not an appropriate use use should be limited and the the the scrupulous bodies do so very very sparingly so I was first elected to city council in 2005 I believe I've cast exactly I have to go back and look at the record but I think I have it right four votes in 13 years for authorizing a minute domain and takings I think that's the way that it should normally be right we use Texans we all pay taxes in the same city when we're talking about a municipality we're all neighbors with one another and we should be very careful to treat them the way we want to be treated it doesn't always happen that way and it depends on their entities that are engaged so that said I'll stop and I know we'll have some good question answer time and thank you again for inviting me to be here it's pleasure well we already have some questions that have been submitted and so I think I'm going to start the discussion with Britain because I think you brought up the fact that there are 60 uh 6900 different entities uh that actually have the power of eminent domain and the question is you know how do we get there and more importantly how can we make changes to that system and then there is a companion question that goes with that which state agency oversees the implementation of eminent domain efforts that's very complex uh let me let me see if I can answer that succinctly uh so I found uh that and I'm going to get a little bit off off topic here uh and be a little bit frustrated with the Texas Controllers website as I generally am because they've changed their website again and they like to change their website and it's I know it's not directed at me but it feels that way I will I will be in the middle of a project and I will be doing a lot of tax data research to try to understand trends and uh growth areas and uh I have the privilege of working for cities counties and private landowners and so uh depending on the project is to there's not really a who side I'm on I try to be on the the side of what's good and what's ethical um and and they all kind of play out in different ways and a lot of what I do doesn't involve eminent domain um but the the Controllers website has changed again and a lot of things moved around and I don't know where this is right now but the last time I went looking for it because I had a very specific question in my head I was trying to answer um and I've authored a paper about eminent domain and and I think it was when I was doing that research um I found a list on on the Controllers website of all the entities and I started scrolling and I said you know when the the little scroll bar is very small and the and and it's very long yeah and it was a lot and I was like well this is strange and I started to read and it was school districts and utility districts and EDC economic development corporations and cities and counties and I was really surprised and now we're getting into railway corporations and quasi railway corporations and then you've got pipeline companies and holders of pipeline interest and and it gets really long and so I say 6900 because that's the number that I remember um and if I go back and look at that and find that I'm wrong I will let the local league know and they can let you all know that I was wrong and I'm glad to own up to that so you you can't just I say you can't just people are trying right now you can't just say well I think we need to use eminent domain so we get that authority no no no there's some pretty kind of clear rules that step down um about that and it's a lot of it for for municipalities especially it's written in the Texas local government code there are just endless chapters of that I only really deal with about five of those chapters on a day-to-day basis thankfully but there's just it's all over the place so here's the deal because there are so many different entities that hold condemning power there is not one single source of authority because general law and home rule cities have different sets of rules and counties have different sets of rules and school districts are a completely different thing and then there's taxation rates involved and who gets taxed on what for what kind of property it's a little bit like the way that we have the legal structure for water in this state we don't really know how we got here but now that we're here it doesn't make a whole lot of sense and so kind of unwinding all of that is also incredibly complex and what we have to remember is Texas population has gone from oh Texas is kind of cool if you know about it in 1990 to everybody wants to be here and and that rapid growth doesn't always come with you know when you have a whole lot of land not that many people it's one thing when you have a whole lot of land and a whole lot of people it's a whole other thing and when I'm hearing consistently and y'all did a good job kind of illustrating this it's growth that's driving all these challenges that we're facing if we're talking about water we're talking about land use if we're talking about county land use authority if we're talking about any of these things transportation and cities growing and providing services to their community these are all driven by growth because when Texas wasn't really growing very much or very fast these things were only an issue and that's why a lot of the things wastewater treatment plants have been in place for 50 plus years that's why some cities have water lines that are over a hundred years old you just didn't need to do anything about it well now we need to do something about it and so I I really applaud you for your efforts with the legislature because there isn't like oh well we'll just go to this one committee that has six representatives and we'll talk to them and then it's a very complex issue and it runs through all kinds of different committee work so the have you all heard about the high-speed rail that's imagined between Dallas and Houston so wouldn't it be pretty handy if you didn't have to drive 45 and you could hop on a train and I've heard the argument well Southwest flights are pretty cheap but then you kind of look at what's going on Southwest right now you might get a little bit nervous and think well a train might be a better idea hey I love Amtrak that is some of the best traveling I've ever done is on a train it's very fun it's very comfortable you have a lot more leg room when I was five my school went from San Antonio to Houston on Amtrak I don't know how they didn't throw us off the train but we had a lot of fun so there are these really enjoyable things oh a train and then a train where's the train go because the train doesn't actually run next to 45 and it's not sitting in text dot land or state-owned land it's it's not so where does that go and then you start thinking about all the people who own land on that route and then you start thinking about oh that'd be pretty expensive to buy all that land and then you understand why this private company that wants to build a high-speed train between Dallas and Houston wants to use eminent domain and then the legislature has to consider that and they have to consider that in the context of all these other things and all these other organizations and entities that are trying to use it and you have all this kind of tension about what it where is it appropriate and where is it not because I imagine there are a lot of people in shirts that would like to have for the provision of sanitary sewer because septic systems age out over time and then you're responsible for it well the city is responsible for it that's way cool and and I understand this point and I agree and there's a couple of situations in which I've advised a city it would probably be in your best interest to look at acquiring this property and you might have to do it in this way that's something to kind of evaluate very carefully so we're sitting here with cities and counties and all these different organizations and there there's no one clear specific top-down answer and that's where it gets really really hard because as we're kind of fleshing this out up here you're starting to see the complexity and starting to see why there's a legal approach that needs to be taken I really don't know why I'm here this is a subject that interests me but then you have a legislative approach from organizations that traditionally represent landowner interest and then you have cities saying we're growing so fast if you look at Texas Water Development Board projections counties along the I-35 corridor are doubling and tripling by 2050 and 2060 we already have a lot of people that's a lot more people that we have to provide a lot more for and again they want the roads wide that they want every time you widen the road and the county doesn't already have the land they've got to get the ride away somehow and so I'm sorry I don't have a better answer I wish I did but it's just that complex honestly and it's going to take a lot of work but I think it begins with a lot of education anybody else want to weigh in on any of this I'll just piggyback on top of that too there's not one agency the railroad commission does so for pipelines but it is the responsibility of the Texas legislature they are the ones who bestow the power of imminent domain into onto any any other entities whether that be municipalities private companies what have you but it's and it's also their responsibility to make sure that the laws are being used judiciously and that landowners are being protected one of our last hearings that we had this hearing may 9th a legislator offered up well what about better education what about your your your landowner groups increasing your dues a little bit creating a legal defense fund and that way you can better protect landowners we're like but it's your job to make sure these bad actors can't can't can't mistreat landowners but that's all I wanted to say and that and that we're really trying to drive home that there is many solutions or there should be many solutions probably but certainly there's a need for a legislative fix well and I'll I'll piggyback on that to say I think people don't realize how quickly it gets away that power gets away of imminent domain and one situation that happens I know I'm talking a lot about muds but I have a case right now in which I'm dealing with one but if a developer can come in and their legislator can help them get a mud a municipal utility district and it's often treated as a what's called a local issue it's not heard by the entire legislature it'll it'll get put on a local calendar so if there's a local legislator that it's buddy buddy with the developer that's in their town and they have and they want to create this mud because they want to provide water and sewer to the homeowners in which they're gonna build their lots they go and they form a mud in the legislature but it doesn't get heard by the entire legislature and what and if you go to the local government code it'll have every mud that's ever been legislated allowed listed mud number 45 mud number 35 and they don't every single one of those has an imminent domain and in this case that I'm working on I'm not going to name names or development but in this case that developer used its mud and it's very very common for them to put on their board of directors their golfing buddies their friends and then they just passing there's one person that elects the board of directors and it's the person that used to live there that they sold the ranch to you and they are the ones that the board of directors is passing and they're passing tax rates and they're deciding which landowners to condemn and in our case I represented a landowner who is next to a development and that developer said oh well I don't have a way to get to this creek other than to put my stormwater in my wastewater on your property so he convinced all of his board of directors who were his golfing buddy to to dim my client's property to put the stormwater in the wastewater on my client's property to get it to the creek and that's not allowed but you have to prove the landowner has to be sophisticated enough to be able to prove well that's the developer condemning my property not a municipal utility district that has some sort of independent authority well the good news is that how that case turned out it's not exactly done yet but the homeowners took over in that development and they told the developer no we're not condemning our neighbor's property you need to figure out another way to put your stormwater in your wastewater and they and they non-suited the condemnation action we're still dealing with what they're going to do with the stormwater but it's mud's created by the legislature or by tzq they can go and petition tzq they can even petition a county elected officials in the county can create a mud and they can say oh that mud has imminent domain authority and it's just one line in their charter basically so for me as representing landowners you know i i do believe that there's a legitimate reason to sometimes use condemnation i do not believe that private developers should be able to condemn privately that's just not what it was before and and we've got to change that with the legislature could do is not allow that anymore but then what do you do about development that needs to get me to have sewer and water and it's a conundrum and what we've done is in this state is done the most expedient thing what's the most efficient what's the cheapest way how do we get if these people want to develop um and development and have houses there and they pay for over time for that water and that wastewater not a bad idea from a policy standpoint but it it does harm neighbors and landowners who are there right i'm going to get off my soap box no it's not i think that's of the greatest importance and the concern that i have a sense from the questions that we're going to get to the others but it's the fifth amendment to the united states constitution does have the language that nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation i'm sure when the fifth man was adopted everyone was under the impression that the entity that would be exercising eminent domain under that power was going to be government and barney frank the wonderful barney frank used to say look government is just another word for when people want to do something together but is a mud another word when people want to do something together or something that's driven by developers and creates a utility district is that the same thing i'm not sure that we're going to turn back the hands of time on on these issues i think that's what bothers almost every citizen out there you know that it's non-maric carpenter and the city council or it's not our mirror the judge or whatever moving forward with something that they're voting on and maybe cost them their political lives but moving and representing people and so i think that that is the the first question i guess that is it's not necessarily in the traditional government it's not the county it's not the city uh it's not our san Antonio water system or whatever i mean this is really curious and what i i'm now going to read to you and i i'm because this will really get you but i'm not sure this is still the situation and i i would like for you all to tell us if it is because it goes to the very heart of some of these questions and i'm going to go all the way back to 2007 2008 uh t-boom pickens and his water district which is very interesting this is a very old story and i got it off the internet so i will not vouch for any of it so okay pickens still needed the power of eminent domain if he was going to build his pipeline and win power lines across private land and by happy coincidence the legislators passed a smaller bill that made that all the uh easier the new legislation loosened the requirements for creating a water district previously a district five uh eight districts five uh elected supervisors needed to be registered voters within the boundaries of the district now they only had uh to uh i'm sorry now they only had to own land in the district they could live in both wherever and then of course you all know the rest because this is probably uh i don't know i'm not going to say that it was an abuse because i'm sure mr pickens would say i followed the law i mean that's you know usually that's what our clients want to hear uh pickens moved quickly to take advantage of the new rules over the summer of 2007 he sold eight acres on the fax side of his range to five people in his employ uh so still well who resides in houston two of his executives in dallas and the couple who manage his ranch alton and lou boone a few days later messa water which is the district filed a petition to create an eight-acre water supply district with those five as the directors and sole members on member six roberts county held an election to decide whether to form the new district only two people were qualified to take part alton and lou boone the vote was unanimous so i don't know the laws didn't change because you know i i know cassie and uh in britain have touched on it more so than others is that still going on yes oh well because we we have a few projects here in san antonio we're really depending on getting some water it is still going on and i'll i'll just say in in the case that i was talking about earlier we had one voter um and they had an election and the lady did not complete the ballot correctly we got into this lawsuit and we're looking at well let's look at how you know how are these golfing buddies elected oh my gosh they weren't elected they've been running this mud but they didn't she never voted for them i don't know what happened but she didn't fill out the ballot correct and so we started asking questions about well how were they voted you know how were they elected how were they voted anyway all when this very smart landowner who was being condemned started frankly he and i joke about this all the time when he walked into my office and told me that there was a private development company and mud directors who were golfing buddies that were condemning his property i just i didn't believe it i really i i was like this is a crazy person i don't believe you and we we laugh about it because i really had to be educated about how messed up the system is to say this was um so your story's in 2007 2008 this happened to my client in 2014 yeah i didn't keep up with it i thought maybe something would be addressed but obviously not well you know um marissa real quick because i know this is interesting right now we cast you brought out that it was water historically it's been oil then we have a lot of pipeline activity in the state of texas as well as all the other states and the canadian the keystone and in such what entity is the eminent domain and the condemnation entity that's taken the right of ways or at least attempting who would do it let's say for the oil pipeline did they it's not the individual company or whatever or it is it is yes uh but the individual company files a form with the railroad commission of texas it's called a t4 form uh it used to be quite simple um i argue that it is still quite simple uh to obtain the power of eminent domain simply by checking a box saying that i you know stated pipeline company name and going to be exercising as a common carrier going to be operating my pipeline as a common carrier meaning similar to a road i'm going to make it a public road so it won't just be my product and exclusively my product that i transport through this pipeline i will offer that up to the marketplace and say if there's any other companies that would like transmit their product through the line they may do so as well kind of makes sense you know if you're going to dig a big hole in the ground and and ruin some property might as well allow several companies to use to utilize that line uh if you're going to do so understandably um one of the things that i had to come to terms with and understanding and educating myself about these issues is that there is absolutely no checks and balances on that process making sure that companies are acting uh in good faith and are acting actually as common carriers now what are we going to do if we find out that they're not that's a whole other conversation that we're not necessarily getting into this coming legislative session but it just points back to again there's just a lot of faith and trust that the legislature has given and given to these individual private companies to make sure that they are responsible with the power that they have to take private property and unfortunately that's not always done so in a good way but fortunately and fortunately for the rights of property owners as well there are plenty of good actors that we have as examples to point to whether it's certain municipalities that have been really exercising their power of imminent domain with discretion and truly as a last resort option um a lot of companies don't perform that way but a lot of companies do and so we can point to them showing examples to the to the legislature saying this is what it's supposed to look like we know that that there can be a standard out there that everyone just should be living up to and we need to make sure the laws help to enforce that this is a question is what type of notice does a municipality utility district need to provide a landowner how far in advance you said it sounded like a mud a municipal utility district or a municipality so but let's say municipality or just what kind of notice do y'all give yeah i didn't go to law school so i come to the table with some ignorance here and without this is just one of many parts of things that you do in a municipal government um before we get to the point of of giving that notice at least it's been my experience in the sea of shirts we we we go and meet with folks in advance we we will have an appraisal done we'll let them show us their appraisal they get an appraisal done we will make an offer well before we ever get to the point of of going down the road of imminent domain in fact before i became mayor and i learned from my previous mayor and previous council we typically would get a uh an appraisal and we would immediately say well we would probably need to take that appraisal offer 15 to 20 percent over what that appraisal is and and and see if that is going to be amenable to the property owner that's typically been the way we've handled things and and i to be honest we have have have exercised uh imminent domain so rarely i don't even know what the time period is this is two weeks it's a 21 days so 21 days um we've been very very fortunate that in most cases we have been able to uh come to agreements with landowners without having to go to an imminent domain proceeding there was a case that i can tell you about that happened while i was a city councilman where we did in fact have to go down that route we initially had offered 115 percent of the appraisal amount that we had seen the landowner didn't want to accept that offer didn't want to sell in any case whatsoever we were in comal county there were three members that were appointed as commissioners for the initial hearing and when it was all said and done we paid about 150 percent of what that appraisal value was because the commissioners were quite um uh quite in agreement with the land owners that uh they shouldn't have to sell if they didn't want to in the first place so i bring that kind of it's a political thing right when you've been in office for a while you start answering the question you come back around and talk about something you want to talk about that uh there's no there's no formal training for that by the way it's time in grade you learn it over time uh but but that's that's typically been the way that we've done things so my ignorance around the amount of time that it takes is probably because we've been very successful in negotiating and working with our landowners in advance and coming to an agreement that that not only they're amenable with but in the end they say you know what this is fine and when everybody around the table say you know it's not really what i want but we come to the center of the table and this is this is something we can all live with um that that's really been the better result rather than all right let's go 21 days get it done um somewhat rare occurrence in my experience that's the difference between dealing with a private pipeline company and a city or county government because they're your neighbors and so it's you there's just a different level of respect and you'll most uh elected officials will take the time to have this conversation sit down to talk to that landowner even if you're not going to eventually agree it is totally different when it's a private company who has a lot of lawyers and employees built into notice they'll do it i mean it it just is earlier when there's a little bit of conversation potentially about is there a single agency that oversees all you know imminent domain in the state of texas i would i guess i would just say that i think that we as as as citizens should be careful with with how how sweeping that might be because as a landowner if someone is going to condemn a portion of what i own i hope it's my local elected officials because i'm going to go knock on their front door or i'm going to catch them an h e b or lows and i'm going to have my say with them and i'm probably not going to be able to do that if that's an entity on the fifth floor of a building in austin or or otherwise so i think having this power somewhat limited 6900 is an amazing number i still can't wrap my head around that to to local folks that you can confront directly it makes a lot more sense to me than having it i could go somewhere with tcq right now but i won't uh fifth floor in austin somewhere or some other place where there's a central authority and mirror the projects that requirement a domain of course these are really a community even the citizen whose property is being condemned and such can relate to the need is that something is supposed to an oil pipeline that is just running through your property or maybe even taking water and shipping it to a bigger city somewhere else i mean that that is part of the issue too it's a much easier discussion whether again whether they come to the front door or catch me an h e b uh to say we're we're we're doing this because we need to bring sanitary sewer down there we can't have so many septic tanks you know how that's going to end up you know 15 20 years down the road some of them will say i'm not going to be here in 15 20 years so just stay out of it completely and then we're talking about bringing water right quality water to the to the uh to the city or the cities that as i've mentioned the two local government corporations we've put together um or or you know anything that that that everybody can clearly see there will be a true public benefit it's a much easier discussion um so let me also say one other thing about that and this is this talks to probably more so in in our rural counties or at least are not not as populous as the the big five if you will uh having a strategic plan for a county uh a strategic plan for a city where they clearly delineated master thoroughfare plan and talking about putting long range plans on paper that allow landowners to see what might happen in the future and take action today whether they want to sell whether they want to build here on their land instead of on this side of their land allows them to take actions to mitigate their risk early on is also and i know it's an oxymoron to say good government but a good government puts those document that documentation forth provides that information to the citizens and gives them an opportunity to be well in front of what may happen in the future so i'm sorry i had to kind of throw that one in there too uh it communication helps the entire process you sound way too reasonable and timing great sir timing great but real quick i was reading what i read to you about teaboon pickens was from bloomberg and the article was entitled there will be water which was a take from the movie there will be blood uh but uh and so mary i know when you discuss things that as you approach and you put people on notice and such well teaboon pickens tried to do that with some of the ranchers and they went and discussed what their plans were about a 250 foot uh easement and such and this is what one rancher said land goes way back for a lot of people here if you tell people you you want their land texans raise their guns i'd say just hire a lawyer i mean uh so let's go with the next uh and this is going to be again maybe another tex is a Texan saying that whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting i said uh for cassie can you say more about the water cases you mentioned i've done both so i'm a litigator when i said so i've both litigated issues with regard to imminent domain representative landowners but i've also lobbied in the legislature and a few years ago two years ago two sessions ago we um had a situation in haze county our firm is in dripping spring and we had a situation in haze county where there was no groundwater district and it was like a donut hole um you guys don't have that in san Antonio because you've planned that out and they're addressing your water issues but you know rule texans historically haven't wanted to be regulated and and thought that they could you know take care of their water on their own water is for fighting so um but one issue that we worked on was to expand the barton springs a varzacopher district over a portion of haze county that would require permitting because we had a company from houston come in and want to um it this ties back into imminent domain wanted to pump a significant amount of water from a ranch um and lease the rights to do that there was no oversight authority on how much they would pump and a lot of the lenders were concerned about the damage to their wells but that same houston company they needed to get so this is near buta texas and they needed to get this water to the city of buta as well as to go force which is on the east side of 35 and they were they were going to pump this water send it pipe it to the city of buta also pipe it to um the city of go for go forth and we were there were three bills that we were trying to get past in the legislature to stop that effort one of which would take the imminent domain authority away it was pretty from from go forth it was pretty egregious what we were being aggressive let me put it that way we were saying if you're gonna give your imminent domain authority away to a private company in houston we don't want you to have the imminent domain authority anymore and so we were sitting there in this big conference room negotiating the bills and the attorney for go forth said have you ever been to go for it i was like no i haven't he said we can't afford to build this pipeline and pipe it to our residents we have to have this private company and then we'll pay them back after we are selling the water and it was just eye opening for me to think you know here we have this need that we have we don't have a strategic plan for um we've built all these houses on the east side of 35 and we haven't thought about how we're going to get water and wastewater to them and and now you're telling me that that i'm representing landowners and their property is going to be condemned because we haven't thought about how to deal with that um so i've worked in the legislature to address and a lot of times um water issues and imminent domain issues go hand in hand i mean we're seeing that a lot in the legislature as as texans need more water and we're moving water around different places it's just really been an impact one good story i'll tell um is i have a client in brady and back to the mayor's point about working with neighbors this this client they had a very large ranch in brady and the city approached them and said hey we would like to get water to another we'd like to clean up the water that we had there was arsenic actually and my clients gave an easement so my client said you know we want to do this for the good of the city um we believe in providing good water to our neighbors we'll give you an easement um but we want to have some discussions about what the easement looks like what's going to be planted here organic beef farmers um ranchers and and they wanted to know what was going to be planted back and so we negotiated that excuse my language the hell out of that easement um to allow on the tap to tap in but what they got in exchange was good water for um their fellow neighbors and it was a it was a win-win for both parties so it doesn't always have to be applied hopefully i answered the question but thank you and this is a question for the entire panel and anyone that can answer it we'll get a finders fee okay this is the question is there a way to research potential future condemnations when looking for land to purchase since we have some short answers no um uh so i'll build off what uh what the mayor said and um about strategic plans and so uh one of the reasons i do what i do professionally is um which my mother still doesn't understand so if you don't know don't worry about it um i prefer it that way but uh one of the things i do uh one of the reasons i do what i do is because there are so many whole country communities that are just don't have the resources to come up with these strategic plans to think long term about water and wastewater um there are a number of communities that their wastewater treatment plants were built decades ago in a floodplain um our flooding situation is becoming much more severe we're we're all very painfully aware of that at this point and so these these long-term things and and these growth challenges are really catching a lot of communities by surprise um and so it's really a matter of you know we we can point a finger or we can step in and help um and i like to be on on the step in and help side when i can and so when we're looking at you know where where should i buy land i'll tell you right now mountain home uh there is nothing happening in mountain home uh there's this there's this little store garden store on the corner uh 41 and 83 and it still looks the same as when i was a little girl um i think the mailbox that we use still there my gate's still there um so but no here's here's what we're looking at so uh i live in georgetown at present georgetown uh if you if you paid any attention to kind of renewable energy news we are just beside ourselves excited that we are the first 100 renewable city in texas our mayor spends his entire week seven days a week talking to people who come from other countries to understand how we did it um a lot of people would not be very happy with what i'm about to say but it's so much nonsense because the energy that we're claiming to have is coming off of a grid system that is powered by a lot of different things and we're basically paying for the privilege of saying no no but that renewably created energy is ours so where does that come from it comes from wind turbines in west texas well how does that power get to georgetown you run transmission lines across a lot of people's land and so while everybody else is jumping up and down excited about this i'm going ah man i feel sorry for somebody a lot of somebody's potentially and so when you're looking at what feeds the city and the growth of the city it's starting it's always come from the hinterlands farmers grow vegetables they produce meat they bring it to the city they sell it it's consumed there some of the waste goes back out and it's just this kind of cycle while our cycle is really no different it's just a lot bigger so if you've ever seen the transmission lines that run from west texas to 10 if you've ever looked the map of the pipelines that source things we've got pipelines from candidate that come to the gulf and everything kind of sucks over to houston so it can get processed follow those routes and then look at the roads and then look at what cities are growing and will be in utilities look at the water sources and so you can begin to see if you have all these different condemning entities and all these different needs for all these different resources i don't know um and i thought paris texas would be pretty safe i lived there for a few years but again my friend julia's farm has got the keystone cutting straight through the middle of it and it almost went through our house so there there kind of isn't a safe place because there are a lot of different things that that you use this for i will tell you uh the more expensive your property is the less likely you might be there's a reason why um and i'll go back to transportation because that's what i'm i'm very familiar with there's a reason why they aren't running a rail line from dallas to san antonio straight down the side of 35 can you imagine how expensive it would be even if you condemned all of that property because that's a higher value property so they're gonna run it over here or you know over here where the land has less value so if you're the reason that they do this is to not have to pay so much the reason is because you don't want to pay 150 percent of the value um because that makes it financially infeasible so anytime somebody says well it's too expensive if we don't do this that means somebody's probably gonna lose um financially um so maybe valdy texas if i'll bend to you valdy you valdy might be a good place to be looking um but uh you know if you're in a if you're in a city and everything's kind of built up and done you know downtown san antonio you're probably pretty safe because it's too costly to do that right here um a little further out it's not as costly and maybe a little bit more attractive and that really it's the dollars that really kind of uh answer that question anyone else there's there's a ton of unpredictable things you know 1600 different authorities that can can exercise the right of eminent domain and and who knows if one of those authorities is is going to by a contract or other mechanism delegate that authority it's just tough to know where everyone is but i will say this politicians have a lot of trouble stopping talking and if you engage local leadership and have a conversation about what's going on in this city what's going on just outside your city what's going on in the county they'll talk about it as long as you want as long as you're willing to listen and you get a lot of insight that way will you mitigate your risk completely no you will not mitigate your risk completely but talk into the folks that are that are engaged talking planning and zoning commissioners in a given city and they've they got their hands they they know about what's going on with every parcel in that city what's going what the plans are long term talk to economic development there's all kinds of folks that are either appointees or electeds that are thrilled to talk ad nauseam about their city or about their political subdivision will give you lots of information it's free thank you very much the next questions it's quite interesting the key little case is terrible and disrupting santonia neighborhoods with highways has long-term ramifications but in modern times how often does eminent domain affect persons who own small or average lots then the companion question would be is the fear of not having property rights an unfounded fear for persons who are not in the highest income brackets so the question goes to the little guy should the little guy be worried about eminent domain anybody can go this will probably take several of us to answer that question the little guy could still certainly be impacted absolutely I would say that my family's property we don't have a lot a lot of land but we've been we've got transmission lines on our property now it's not necessarily anything that's limited to you know large property owners we hear about from large property owners more so than smaller landowners sometimes but one of the other rubs I have with this issue and with understanding this issue is there is there is an infinite lack of data I can't give you a good answer to the question and I think it's a fair and good question and and I've wondered that myself but we have no way of knowing there's there's no reporting requirements there's no oversight necessarily the Texas legislature can look into it if they want to dig or I guess as an individual I can go and ask my county clerk to turn over some of the information that they have on settlements but it won't have or won't speak to the kinds of offers that landowner was given or kind of what the process was that they had to go to to get to that settlement amount so it's it's just it's hard to determine and hard to define but you know maybe some of the other panelists can help me answer this question as well in practice we've seen both large ranges be impacted and also small I've had clients that come forward and they haven't maybe they have a half acre an acre where their house is built we've argued before that it's a complete take of that home and that lot because they were running a transmission line across that homeowner's property and we've been successful in getting the paid to move I mean that that that is what they wanted because they didn't want to live underneath a transmission line so we've seen it both affect large landers and small landers in my practice what is most important if you're if you're a large landowner or a small landowner is to join forces with your neighbors that is by far the best thing you can do it's how you can be most effective I've seen landowner groups really really be affected in the way they've changed transmission line routes how they've band together to move roads how they've been together to oppose pipelines and it's a lot easier to do that in groups than it is just to be a sole lander so I would say there's power in numbers and so even if you don't own a big ranch joining together with neighbors is really important and definitely no silver bullet answer no simple answer to it I do think that those are in more rural areas depending upon what the project looks like are probably a greater risk another argument for having him in a domain authority with local elected officials you know again we have to see what's going to happen it'd be it's going to be a lot easier for for a an elected body to go through an area that is sparsely populated the cost less than an area that is much more populated and is going to cost a lot more money that's just the way that the mind is going to think but to the point of landowners getting together how many of you have ever driven from from Arkansas across the Mississippi River into Tennessee on I-40 done that what happens when you get get to the river you have two choices right you go to 240 north or 240 south why because interstate 40 stops inside the city limits and you have to go around the city one way to the north or one way to the south to get to the other side of the city to get to the bridge to get across the river because a whole bunch of folks in a developed area said you're not building interstate through here never going to happen go around and they had to go around which means all of us that drive under state 40 now that want to go from anywhere east of Memphis over into Arkansas have to go around that's probably one of the very best examples and you can see this grab a map when you get home tonight look up the map of the Memphis Tennessee area and you'll see interstate 40 just stops and what's amazing is if you don't get off and go to the north or go to the south the road gets a little smaller and then a little smaller and then it tees at a neighborhood it stops it doesn't go through the zoo it doesn't go through over to the park it just flat stops so to your point about folks getting together there's a great example you can see on the map about what happens when a potential development this was a potential federal taking right folks get together saying not going to come through here and the price would have been just extraordinary and that was a big a big deterrent so just an example i'm sorry go ahead i was just gonna take quickly i think that's a really good example um so we may not have time to get into it tonight but um you know and i live up north of austin but hear a lot about austin issues and so something that would you need to be very thoughtful of when we're looking at who has combination authority is the more that becomes the purview of private development corporations who are we're still in today and now doing a little bit of what used to be called slum clearing and it's now called economic revitalization or or something and what we're finding that really means is somebody who has less has to pay the price for somebody else to have more and there's a real equity issue there because a lot of those economic development areas and if you're familiar with the kilo case watch the little pink house movie it'll make a lot of sense people who have less who are you know well you know let's just clear all that slum and blight it's not slum and blight it's really not it's where people live it's their home their community and their networks and so we need to be really careful about who gets to say what has value in communities when we do this so that was just what I wanted to add at the very end because I think that got to another aspect of that question I think you probably were looking at this particular question since politics plays a big role in eminent domain should it be thought of in terms of cost benefit analysis and in terms of human rights well you're kind of everybody's being silent you're looking my way absolutely it should I mean eminent domain if for a got to be careful how I say it right I don't want to indict any of my neighboring cities but for for electeds that are serious about doing the work of being elected and not just having the position doing that cost benefit analysis taking into account the the multitudinous variables that will affect a taking decision should be the very first thing that you should take it very slowly it's it should not be a hey we have an opportunity to take this let's go it should be conversations with the people that are going to be affected finding out what is going to what what what cascading effects there are going to be for those individuals for those families etc sometimes and again it's interesting by having the conversations up front we're often able to get to a place where we have a solution without going anywhere near eminent domain right the family that said yeah you know what I think we have a responsibility to allow a water line to be to come across our property let's talk about what's good for both of us right and and so I think that that again I come back to communication from the condemning authority with those who are going to be affected can sometimes come up with rather fair and equitable outcomes and sometimes elegant outcomes and I'll just give you a quick example we we I was telling you earlier that we didn't I couldn't get a unanimous vote to even authorize the potential use of eminent domain to do a survey for a sanitary sewer line it was only after we had extensive conversations with the landowners about what their concerns were that for a few of them we found they just didn't want to have manholes up above their ground level and they didn't want to have heritage trees and such taken off of their land in such a way that it would it would permanently affect their quality of life as they saw it so we just had to come up with a way to well either we find a way to raise the land when we get to the manholes or lower them if engineering will allow and then make an agreement that if we take out that tree there here's what we're going to do in response to make up for it or you know what I tell you what it makes sense we can do engineering wise we'll go around that tree and we'll come back across on the other side it'll add some cost for us but we can do that for you if if a a an authority that has the right to exercise eminent domain takes the time to get into those conversations it doesn't have to be nearly as egregious as it appears in the kilo case and in others oftentimes sometimes it takes more time and folks don't want to spend that time an equitable or elegant solution will present itself have you ever thought of uh owning and managing a pipeline company I think you'd be good at it we don't see that necessarily taking place um by a lot of the private actors certainly some of them we do but we hear those stories from landowners again after time after time after time of their heritage trees being destroyed and somehow they found the only two on the property but they were lifted um but yeah we we always applaud and we certainly want to even distinguish uh within our legislative fight some of uh what the good actors who exercise their their authority judiciously and and from those who don't again it's just trying to raise everyone up to that standard so they're treating landowners um adequately and then we can get these projects built and developed um you know we're probably not going to be operating too much longer in the future of the the state of texas where we can own huge huge amounts amounts of property without seeing a transmission or a pipeline coming through um I am becoming a property owner myself in Austin and I understand and I'm not saying I would look forward to it but if there is a piece of my land maybe that's needed for the for the legitimate good of the public you know I'm a citizen that gets to benefit from other people having given up their property themselves I'm apart I want to be a part of the solution for sure uh but as long as we're all being treated fairly and I just commend the standard that some of the some of the cities and uh uh counties also um treat landowners um adequately and fairly and I think we really remember too and and part of this is um I went to planning school so we like it things a little bit differently um so when we're talking about who gets heard um and I really want to get back to it to this equity issue when we're talking about who gets heard we need to remember that not everyone gets heard because not everyone has the means and the access to be heard so when you're looking at smaller landowners if you're looking at people who um and maybe in cities again you can you can basically a city can hand over land to a private developer for their use that's been demonstrated the supreme court supported that so for some people the the prospect of um here's what will pay you for what you have can look really attractive so there's not not everybody wants to fight this not everybody wants to take the legal option not everyone can or will hire an attorney not everyone can or will speak out and so uh when you know you're looking at these things happening in your community when you're looking at these things happening in in rural areas too there are people who are going to not be part of this conversation because they don't have access to it and I think uh understanding that is really important to looking at what this looks like in the future because historically uh the people who have not had voice and uh so I don't know if anybody's ever heard of Robert Moses because really well known in New York City he plowed down entire neighborhoods to put in freeways because we were going to move cars around faster and better and entire neighborhoods were just decimated and uh and Jane Adams is famous for you know you're not going to destroy my Greenwich Village uh she wrote books and and now you know she's kind of like the the rock star of planners right she never was an official planner herself uh in the way that we might think of that and so uh so that's an example if somebody had a voice and they could use that voice but not everybody has that uh or feels that they have access to that and so as you look at your community and look at the things going on uh remember that not everybody's going to have a voice and that is on some of us to make sure that we're not only conscious of that but working to correct some of these historic errors that have taken place and some of these historic abuses that have left people without being able to participate in these conversations and I've got this is a an observation and for all of us that have grown in old enough uh to have grown here in San Antonio says in 1968 a plan to run highway 281 through Bracken Ridge Park led to congressional legislation barring interstates from going through public parks and I can't yeah I just remember that Pat Maloney represented the nuns and held it up for so many years but isn't there that stretch where it's it's 37 if you think in terms of the of the US highway but it's 281 for just a certain portion right so I guess they still got around it after all those years I'm not real sure how that worked out but it's really interesting how it's still cut to a park uh the other thing too is the mayor was discussing about talking to individuals hard decisions the other panelists has referred to it's not always an easy call would we have hemisphere would we have had hemisphere but for urban renewal and condemnation and that was painful for a lot of families if you remember some did not leave willingly so but what would we've done without hemisphere in san antonio that basically jumped started a new era for us all right well now that we have how do we protect those who offered below market value for their houses or land and so if y'all would explain quickly because I know we run out of time there are commissioners or and they make a finding and can that be appealed who who makes the final decision on these things the first portion of that um so when a condemning authority decides to condemn land if a negotiation doesn't work out with that lender they are required to send them an appraisal and notify them of their rights um but then the landowner gets sued which can be scary for a landowner they don't like to think that they would get sued for something but they do and that's the process and then the county judge will appoint three commissioners once the suit is filed the county judge will appoint three commissioners that are typically landowners or have knowledge about land in that county and you can choose to strike them they'll have alternate um and and suggest someone but it is kind of sometimes you can ask for somebody to be put on or there's a problem with someone being appointed or they have a conflict then you can ask for them to be removed then you go to a an informal it's a pretty informal hearing uh where the condemning authority will put on evidence about what they think the value of the land is and the landowner has an opportunity to put on evidence sometimes the landowner is um represented by an attorney and appraiser sometimes the landowner will go and represent themselves I've even had landowners just not go um because they're they know they're going to appeal whatever the commissioners decide so the commissioners hear all the evidence that's presented and then they decide what the value is going to be of the property that's being taken and then the landowner has the opportunity to appeal that to to county court at law or district court um and and then the condemning authority will put whatever the value that the commissioners have awarded in a like an escrow account kind of a an account that's set aside and the landowner can access that if they want um during the proceedings of the litigation but once the appeal is gone to court then the landowner would proceed to just like a regular lawsuit where you're putting on evidence and you do discovery and it's about really about appraisals and fighting over that one of the things I've seen in our practice is if a landowner is really fighting for a particular value then they have less control over what the easement is that they're getting on their property so sometimes the negotiation will be um I'm willing to from a landowner's perspective I'm willing to take less money in order to get the easement terms that I want because if you move forward with the lawsuit you're going to get the easement that the condemning authority wants you to have they don't negotiate at that point what the easement terms are so some landowners will choose to take a little less money in order to um get the native seed that they want or to have a certain block or a gate or we have all kinds of different easement terms that we might negotiate on behalf of landowners but that's kind of how the legal process works and of course once you get into a court it can be appealed to the court of appeals go to the supreme court all the regular judicial system applies at that point anyone else I would certainly say um if the landowner is not comfortable or interested in trying to seek or going to seek the counsel of an attorney uh for sure try and find a good appraiser but they make sure they're specialized in in imminent domain there's a difference between uh just your standard real estate appraiser and uh an appraiser who understands the imminent domain process and condemnation and how to value what your land or the the damages to the remainder of your land might be because that's also required by law for you to be compensated with unfortunately you have to still provide or you still have to pay for your own appraiser out of pocket so that's something that the landowner is just going to have to bear the cost of and the burden of themselves but anybody who calls Texas Farm Bureau we give them some basic tips and tricks but to a certain certain standpoint we encourage them to seek the uh the counsel of an attorney who can help them out with this process right what Marissa said it's really important when you're hiring an appraiser that you ask them how often they work for governmental entities and how often they work for landowners because they're the certain perspective um that appraisers bring to the table and we call them landowner friendly appraisers in our office will say that's a landowner friendly appraisal which means we have a list of appraisers that we would never hire because they're they're mostly hired by governmental entities and they're usually the people who are on the other side so you you want to if you're ever doing that on your own just make sure to ask how how often do you represent landowners versus governmental entities they'll use one that represents a lot of governmental entities I don't know of anyone addressed it I may have missed it will you be entitled to a jury well in that case because if it's a jury of your peers such as property owners you know justice may be done I can't guarantee it and as far as if the property owner prevails and gets a higher value from the jury there might be court costs but will there be attorney's fees or anything else awarded you mean the landowner is out all of the cost to basically win but you have to win by quite a margin to make up the difference attorney fees attorney's fees are not automatically awarded in an imminent domain case usually attorneys the industry standard is they will take a portion of a contingency fee as how most attorneys do that so they don't get paid unless they win money for you and have different numbers that they'll take depending on the complexity of the case but attorneys fees are rarely recoverable that could be something we take to the legislature wouldn't that be nice but but but a court could award attorney fees to a landowner couldn't they they could it's it's discretionary so it's not mandatory about statutes not mandatory at all but we paid the attorney fees on our hundred and fifty percent as well well I should I shouldn't say that you're totally right attorneys can be awarded in my it's rare I wouldn't bank on it let's put it that way it and it definitely has to be I think attorneys fees have to be paid whenever the entity is found to have not given a bonafide offer which really means very basic things which is they have to give an initial offer wait a certain amount of time then they have to give a final offer wait a certain amount of time and then the condemnation process then can continue actually proving if they negotiated in good faith is quite near impossible and it's very difficult for get your to get your attorneys fees paid for under that so it can certainly be a challenge unfortunately I would need two more hours to talk about advocating for allowing landowners to get their attorneys fees paid for within the imminent domain process we push for that very strongly as a main point in our legislation last session and we're overwhelmingly defeated on the basis of you are going to turn this process into an overly litigious system it's going to be a trial lawyers dream come true landowners are just going to litigate litigate litigate and this is going to stop development this is going to curb necessary infrastructure and that was certainly something that the legislature listened to not the rights of the landowners having a shot at defending themselves and getting fairly compensated and fully compensated I should always say fair and full because deep down I believe that should come with attorneys fees and we also put a trigger on that which we thought was fair enough which was if if the special commissioners or or a jury or judge decided that what was what was fair compensation or what was needed to be awarded to that landowner what if that amount was 20 percent more than the last offer that that that the entity get gave the landowner then that was the trigger that okay they actually never should have gotten to this point altogether and so that should be the trigger for the landowner getting their attorneys fees paid for we are potentially open to raising that percentage a little bit higher but that was not ever an option that was left on the table that entire attorney's fees provision was scrapped from the get-go and negotiation and negotiations and in fact Texas oil and gas association Texas pipeline and several of them would not walk into the room whenever we came to the table having that language still on the piece of paper they stood outside in the door behind the doors no we didn't get very far but we're going to try again not necessarily with the attorney's fees legislation we're still mulling that over but again Texans4propertyrights.com if you're interested we certainly need all the support we can get so thank you again for having invited us to be a part of this panel thank you well real quick it's gonna it's eight o'clock we're gonna uh my hoot's gonna come up in a minute but I want to say what an incredible job the league did and they in getting this panel together tonight because you saw the diverse views but you know specialties and such and all the different considerations public policy from a government official the lawyers they're in there those seeking legislative changes but eminent domain is a much bigger issue of importance to the public and the public realizes and thanks to the league and thank you you guys were absolutely wonderful I'm sure don't be surprised if you take this on the road so again thank you thank you all especially the panelists you guys did a great job a lot of food for thought for all of us and what I would like to ask you and request you is I'll give you my business card but if you could send us some of the links that you are talking about that we can either put it on our website or include it in our next newsletter because that will be extremely helpful to people and I certainly hope that the pink house movie is on Netflix or Amazon we would love to see the movie and thank you all for coming and joining us I want to thank our moderator on such a serious subject he tried to make sure we get a few good laughs and you you guys were helpful in doing that I also want to thank Charlotte who is from now cast and she had streamlined the video you know it was all taped it will be available on our website hopefully tomorrow so you know those who didn't couldn't join us in person can actually watch the video and they can gain from the knowledge that you all have shared with us so thank you all of you and thank you our great moderator charlie good job