81 
4. Private industry has encountered difficulty in providing new industrial, 
commercial, and residential facilities in new large-scale urban development 
because of problems in assembling land suitable for building sites, the difficulty 
of attracting private capital at reasonable cost to finance development, and the 
difficulty of private enterprise alone to plan, finance, and coordinate industrial 
and commercial development with residential developments for persons and 
families of low income and with adequate public services to serve new development. 
5. State acquisition of land, site improvement, and disposition of land around 
the fringe of urban growth areas and at other points in anticipation of future 
growth, provide a major method for implementing state and local urban growth 
policies for assisting private developers.” 
The proposed legislation by Krasnowiecki and Paul complements 
the ACIR findings by providing elaboration, particularly for the 
claims of efficiency and economy. Selected passages from their proposed 
legislation spell out the following purposes: 
* * * To secure open spaces, within metropolitan areas which will promote 
the economic use of land and the economic development of facilities, services, 
and improvements necessary for urban community living in metropolitan areas by: 
* * * Restricting or preventing new urban development in areas where it will 
impose unreasonable costs for required public facilities or services; 
* * * Retarding development * * * in areas where it is not yet timely because 
of lack of adequate public facilities * * * and because the costs which the exten- 
sion, construction, operation, or improvement of such facilities * * * would 
impose on the area are unreasonable by comparison with its present resources; 
* * % Preserving less congested land areas in the metropolitan areas which 
could be used, in part, to achieve economies in planning and locating transpor- 
tation facilities. 
The legislative findings could continue, but it seems more important 
now to ask whether the dozen or more already listed have any basis in 
fact. Krasnowiecki perhaps best recognized the need for such scrutiny 
when he observed: 
If data cannot be marshaled to show that the preservation of an open space 
area will reduce costs and promote long term economies in the public sector, then 
the desirability of many projects and perhaps, too, the philosophy of the underlying 
enabling legislation may be open to serious question.% 
It will be recalled how Justice Finley, in his dissenting opinion, 
in Hogue v. Port of Seattle judicially recognized some ‘statistical 
facts” ® which demonstrated to him that it was in the public interest 
of the people of Seattle to buy open land for an industrial park. One 
is left to ponder how convincing these ‘facts’? were and why the 
majority of the court did not find them sufficiently compelling to com- 
mit the city to buy the land in question. One possible explanation is 
that the statistics were not examined as a part of the legislative his 
tory which authorized the taking in the first place. Whatever the case, 
it is clear that the data supporting legislative findings for Government 
involvement in large-scale development should be made public and 
formally recorded as a part of the legislative process. 
Toward a critical examination of public benefits and costs 
In examining the facts which support or detract from the various 
legislative findings listed thus far, it is helpful to divide them into 
benefits and costs. On the benefit side of the ledger, there are at least 
four significant but somewhat interrelated assertions.*° 
2 ACIR, “State Legislative Program: New Proposals for 1969,’’ pp. 507—-2-3 (1968). 
8 Krasnowiecki and Paul, op. cit., pp. 218-219. 
% Tbid, p. 82 (emphasis added). 
% See note 81, supra. 
96 Most of these four assertions have been developed from material in Shoup and Mack, ‘Advanced Land 
Acquisition by Local Government,” op. cseit.; e note 37, supra. 
