Lawsuit Against Clinton Library Construction
Gets Day in Court
A Little Rock real estate developer got his day in the Pulaski County (Ark.) Chancery Court April 6 in his quest to stop the city from taking 2.9 acres of land he owns to complete the 27.7-acre Clinton Presidential Library site. Eugene Pfeifer III brought suit in December, contending that Arkansas’s eminent-domain law does not include a library as among the reasons why the government may demand property in exchange for just compensation.
Noting that President Clinton is no longer a registered voter in Arkansas, City Attorney Tom Carpenter argued that the land is intended for a public park that might or might not house a presidential library, and that Pfeifer’s challenge “is not about law, it is about politics.” Pfeifer, who is a Republican, said in the April 6 Little Rock Arkansas Democrat-Gazette after the hearing, “It’s an issue of what’s right.”
The lawsuit is the latest attempt to block the library’s construction. In April 1998 an antitax group failed to gather enough signatures to block the issuance of $16.5 million in bonds to purchase land for the project.
Posted April 10, 2000.
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