Eight years ago. the city of New London, Conn., lured drug giant Pfizer to town by offering them a 10-year, 80% break on normal property taxes. The city even created an economic development corporation to expropriate houses near the Pfizer complex for a proposed new "urban village" of hotels, shops and condos that would better suit the new biggest employer in town.
Some local residents fought back on behalf of their neighborhood. The dispute went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled 5 to 4 in 2005 that municipalities indeed have the right to expropriate private homes for vague redevelopment plans.
Last week, Pfizer announced that in two years' time (about the time their tax holiday ends), they will be moving out of New London and consolidating operations at their campus in nearby Groton. New London will lose 1400 jobs - and any chance of seeing that "urban village" it fought so hard for.
As the New York Times reported, local residents now see Pfizer "as a corporate carpetbagger that took public money, in the form of big tax breaks, and now wants to run."
A spokesman for the landowners told the Times that Pfizer’s announcement “really shows the folly of these plans that use massive corporate welfare and abuse eminent domain for private development.”
The only good news is that 43 states have since moved to strengthen private property laws to prevent money-hungry municipalities from taking people's homes.
Which is worse? Overzealous bureaucrats, or corporate welfare bums?
Read the gruesome details here.
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