Michael McCaul on Property Rights

September 29, 2006, was a busy day in the House, at least for Representative Michael McCaul. There was not one, not two, but three bills up for a vote that day. Yet strangely, Michael McCaul only could bring himself to vote on (and for) HR 5441 and S 3930. He apparently doesn't have an opinion on the Private Property Rights Implementation Act of 2006.

While it didn't get a lot of press play, the Cincinnati Enquirer did print a partial transcript of the floor debate. It's kind of a fun read, even though Representative Michael McCaul, having not voted, is unsurprisingly not mentioned in the transcript.

To summarize, critics generally didn't like the bill because allows real estate developers to bypass a local municipality's court system and head straight to federal court if they don't like how a municipality zones the land. Some people feel that this basically removes any real authority a local city or community has in zoning land, while supporters seem to believe that this merely expedites the court process for people who might not want to spend time losing appeals in order to eventually reach federal court.

Cynics, being a cynical lot, believe that this bill was a pre-election cum lame duck gift to land developers, since they're the ones who appear to benefit most from a system that allows them to skip past an unfavorable appeals process.

Unfortunately, it's hard to tell what McCaul meant by not voting on the bill. Maybe he didn't mean anytihng -- perhaps he was just worn out from voting on the other two bills that day.