As New Yorkers grapple with the fallout from the Supreme Court’s Kelo v. New London travesty, they can now look to their southern neighbors for ideas on how to end eminent domain abuse in the Empire State. The Pennsylvania state senate recently passed a bill that would dramatically limit the government’s ability to take private property for any but truly public uses. They’re doing so by closing a long-standing loophole that also afflicts New York, so the Keystone State legislation warrants careful study in Albany.

The loophole in question deals with blight. Under the current laws both in New York and Pennsylvania, the government can seize any blighted property and pass it along to another private owner who will then develop it. It sounds reasonable to allow the government to seize vacant lots that would otherwise merely be home to tumbleweed and vermin, but in practice “blight” has been defined so fluidly that it can mean just about anything.

For example, the Empire State Development Corporation cited blight when it condemned the midtown parcel for the New York Times’s new headquarters in Times Square. The site, however, was home at the time to a building that had recently undergone a $3 million refurbishment and was housing the Taylor Business Institute and the SAE Institute, another building with 30 commercial tenants, and a dormitory for 140 student residents.

In the case of the New York Times headquarters, “blight” actually turned out to mean a use that the ESDC didn’t happen to think was economically productive enough. In effect, the liberally interpreted blight exception provides a veneer of public benefit to most private development projects that exploit the government’s eminent domain powers – the vast majority of the Empire State’s abusive takings are technically seizures of “blighted” property. In a twist, the pro-reform Castle Coalition noted in a 2003 report that if that Times Square property was underdeveloped when the Times took over the site in 2001, eminent domain itself was partly to blame. The land had first been condemned in 1981 as part of a different project that was never completed, and that ruling discouraged property owners from fixing up property they expected to be seized one day anyway.

Pennsylvania lawmakers faced a situation similar to New York’s when they set about tackling their commonwealth’s eminent domain laws. Pennsylvania’s old Urban Redevelopment Law said that any “economically or socially undesirable land use” could count as blight, throwing open the door to countless abuses. In response, the senate recently passed a bill defining blight in physical, instead of social or economic, terms. A property would only be “blighted” if, for example, it poses a public nuisance under the traditional common law definition, has been declared unfit for human habitation, or has been abandoned.

The bill, which could be passed by the Pennsylvania house as early as today, “serves as a model for other states,” the coordinator of the Castle Coalition, Steven Anderson, told us yesterday. That includes New York, with its own hyperactive interpretation of blight. Lawmakers in Albany are certainly aware of the problem, although it isn’t clear yet when or how they will elect to solve it. A reform measure currently being pushed by Assemblyman Richard Brodsky focuses more on procedural issues, such as forcing local legislative bodies like a city council to vote on any taking after examining thorough economic reports and owner impact statements, but does not touch on the blight problem except to mandate a study of the issue. Proponents of reform, such as Letitia James, a City Council member who has proposed resolutions supporting Mr. Brodsky’s bill, recognize that an overly broad interpretation of blight is a significant problem in New York. It seems likely that lawmakers will take up blight separately after they have dealt with Mr. Brodsky’s other proposals. The sooner the better.