The Long Branch City Council is “dissing” the law. I use poetic license here in referencing the Latin meaning of the word lexic, which pertains to law.

At the Nov. 9 Council meeting, everyone loved the plucky little woman who told council members, “You can’t have my house.” The council, Dr. Jane Celli, Michael DeStefano, David G. Brown, Mayor Adam Schneider, John Zambrano and Anthony Giordano stared back at her blankly.

Her reference was to their ongoing abuse of the true nature and intent of eminent domain. Her home is one among a whole neighborhood known as MTOTSA — Marine Terrace, Ocean Terrace, and Seaview Avenue — whose allure to the council and some heavyweight opportunistic developers is its picturesque proximity to the ocean.

In saner and kinder days, eminent domain provided for a necessary public use of private property. Today — through chicanery and a 1992 law called New Jersey Redevelopment and Housing Law — local officials can conspire with developers for condemnation of private property for the purpose of private development and private gain. Politicians such as these and a horde of others throughout the state are right now finding the justification for rape of a cherished property in the single word “blight.”

They have corrupted the meaning of blight and turned it into a statutory term that describes property which can be used for “better purposes.” The better purpose here is to grab a charming and historic piece of Americana from the very people who made it so, and hurl them out so developers — ready with bulldozers — can build and sell condos at a very profitable price of up to $1 million each.

CBS’s 60 Minutes with Dan Rather recently shone its spotlight on what is termed a nationwide epidemic. The Institute for Justice — a nonprofit legal help organization — has published the results of a five-year study called “Public Power, Private Gain: The Abuse of Eminent Domain.” America is waking up to it. Our judges have to wake up to it.

Just suppose thousands of people stood alongside that plucky little woman and shouted to the Long Branch Council “You can’t have her house!”

Bernice Roberts

Middletown