THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER - JUNE 2, 2002
"Cypress' white-collar crime"
- Steven Greenhut, Senior editorial writer
"The greatest evil," C.S. Lewis wrote, "is not done now in those sordid 'dens of crime' that Dickens loved to paint... It is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried and minuted) in clear, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice."
On Tuesday night, in a well-lighted and nicely carpeted (albeit a bit cold) meeting room in the city of Cypress, the well-groomed council members, at the urging of well-dressed, white-collared staff members, calmly and quietly voted to condemn an 18-acre property owned by Cottonwood Christian Center. They will give it to Costco, or to a developer that builds a tax-generating facility that officials prefer.
The city's actions were properly motioned and seconded, backed by impressive-sounding legal theories, and recorded in public minutes, as the law dictates. The officials, such as city attorney Bill Wynder, didn't shirk at the task before them. In fact, Wynder boasted at how honored he was to represent the city in this taking, and he sneeringly described the church as "a very narrow special interest."
City officials portrayed themselves as the defenders of the city's overall financial and social interests against the designs of a narrow group of selfish religious people. Amazingly, they accused the church of bullying, even though it's the city that has and is using the power of eminent domain. Never mind that the church actually owns the property - minor details to Wynder and Co., whose understanding of property rights would have been a good fit in 1970s Romania.
Besides, it's really the church's fault anyway, officials believe. Community development director David Belmer seemed astonished that the church hadn't responded to the city's offer to buy a property the church didn't want to sell. As he put it, "The agency found that Cottonwood was nonresponsive to the invitation." Imagine that, not accepting an invitation to be robbed! Councilman Tim Keenan also blamed the church for putting the city in the position of having to take the property.
Apparently, if those annoying Christians had only rolled over without a fight, the city would never have had this divisive meeting, with its hundreds of sign-carrying church supporters, honking horns and circus atmosphere.
Keenan, who at one point launched an anti-Cottonwood tirade that bordered on outright bigotry, claimed that some church members mortgaged their houses to pay for the land and demanded to know whether the church was obligated to give them their money back after the city took the property. He derided the church's attempt to exercise its property rights as a "speculative proposition," and claimed that the City Council was the victim of a "worldwide propaganda" campaign.
Council member Anna Piercy's remarks were almost as outrageous. She compared the city to a big family. She and her fellow council members are the parents who have to make the tough decisions, and church members are like the kids "who only want what they see."
Those darned spoiled Cottonwood kids, thinking they had a right to build on their own property!
Ironically, council members took umbrage at comparisons between them and Soviet-era leaders, yet the model Piercy described - the government as Mom and Dad, the subjects as the Children - is far closer to a totalitarian than a democratic model. The mantras from city officials were "responsible planning" and "the public good" - Orwellian catch phrases hardly in keeping with a free society.
City-hired attorney Dan Slater of Rutan & Tucker, explained in monotonous legalistic tones why the site of the church's planned multimillion-dollar, properly zoned architect-designed facility was actually blight, and why city officials are in the best position to determine "a better use than that proposed by the church."
Slater accused the church of misleading the public by suggesting that the city's action would impact the church facility. You see, it's only land being taken, not a church. This drew laughs from members of the audience, who couldn't believe the legalistic nitpicking.
"The land is blighted and that blight is beyond challenge," Slater added. "It is blighted and this property is considered to be blighted property... Those are conclusions determined under the law."
Never mind that if the city would simply let the church build its facility that the lot would no longer be blighted, at least in any sane definition of blight. This is where the Lewis quotation really comes into play. The only thing that matters is that the blight designation was made legally, in a clean and well-lighted office, not whether the property actually is blighted or that taking it from its owners is wrong.
Councilman Mike McGill insisted that the city had the right to take Cottonwood's land because a city official sent a letter to the church before it bought the land explaining that the city may prefer a different use. That much-debated letter, sent by a staff member nine months into the purchase process, is by no means a negation of property rights. But why talk about rights when one can jumble the issue?
The city's ad hominem attacks on the church, its grandiose legal justifications, officials' unsavory self-congratulation and the "mind-numbing bureaucratic banality," as one Cottonwood attorney described it, cannot divert attention from the obvious fact: City officials are perpetrating an egregious act.
The contrast between the city's bureaucratic banality and Cottonwood's presentation was stunning. The church made a simple case. As Pastor Bayless Conley explained, the church owns the land. Had the city wanted it, it could have gone through the trouble of assembling the parcels and buying it in the many years it sat vacant. The church does good work saving souls, providing social services, meeting community needs. Its value cannot be measured in terms of sales-tax dollars.
Besides, the land has been vacant so long, it's absurd to argue that the city of Cypress' economic future and the services it provides are dependent on building a Costco rather than a church.
County Supervisor-elect Chris Norby, an opponent of redevelopment abuses, disputed the city's claim that taking the church is the greatest public good, noting that "a privately owned big box store is not a public use, it's not even a public store. It's a private club closed to nonmembers." When a troubled youth is seeking to rehabilitate himself, Norby asked, does he go to the Costco electronics section?
Gideon Kanner, professor emeritus of Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and one of the nation's pre-eminent property rights scholars, disputed city claims that taking the church property is clearly a public use. Yes, Kanner said, redevelopment is deemed a public use, but many particular takings violate that standard.
"It's human nature to sin," he said, and as human-run organizations, redevelopment agencies are routinely abusing property rights and engaging in anti-competitive practices on behalf of big corporations like Costco. The courts are increasingly reining in the abuses.
A representative from Assemblyman Ken Maddox's office disputed the council's condescending claims that there already are plenty of churches in Cypress. Maddox's letter said: "If the city has plenty of Baptist churches should a Lutheran church be denied a place in the city? It is not the role of government to ration places of worship."
In the 1998 book, "Unmasking Administrative Evil," authors Guy B. Adams and Danny Balfour explain, according to one Internet review, how "ordinary people within their normal professional and administrative roles can engage in acts of evil without being aware that they are doing anything wrong. ... People may even view their legal activity as good."
People get so immersed in processes and unaccountable bureaucracies that they lose the ability to see right from wrong. They can do what the Cypress City Council and staff are doing to Cottonwood, and think it's OK because it's being done in a well-lighted room, by well-dressed people under the auspices of the law.
But it's still wrong. Fortunately, Cottonwood has the willingness
and the finances to do what's right and fight this thing as far
as it can.