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Naperville Sun
August 7, 2002

Editorial: State shouldn't limit land rights

State Sen. Chris Lauzen (R-Aurora) is on the right track when he expresses concern that a proposed Prairie Parkway route would negatively affect the owners of property in its path.

The parkway may be built west of here in Kane and Kendall counties. It would be a north-south route stretching between interstates 80 and 88 that, it is hoped, would ease traffic congestion on other roadways.

The route designation would keep the 35.8-mile-long, 400-foot-wide path from being developed.

However, the road would not be built for at least a decade, during which time the property owners it affects would have lost any value from their land until such time as the state decides to buy it.

Moreover, no funding for anything more than a study has been secured, and it may well be that the road would never be built at all.

Lauzen, whose district includes Naperville, disagrees with siting a route before proving a need for the road and conducting environmental-impact and community-impact studies. However, the federal money for the study is contingent upon a route being sited first.

The senator was quoted as saying, "I do also believe that the bigger issue is the constitutional one concerning the power of a government to restrict property rights when they're not even sure they're going to build."

We agree with Lauzen that the route should not be sited, and property rights affected, until after the studies are done.

We would also suggest that because neither gubernatorial candidate has embraced this plan, many area representatives oppose it, and given the shaky state of the state's and the federal government's financing, there may not be funds forthcoming to build this road at all, even if its construction schedule is a decade away.

No matter how much the Illinois Department of Transportation deems this road desirable for moving traffic in the future, politics and lack of funding could well do in the proposal.

Moreover, we would call upon the state, if it is actually going to build the Prairie Parkway, to buy the land as soon as a route is sited and the appropriate studies conducted, rather than leave landowners with property they cannot expect to develop.