Get Off Your Land!

The property-rights lawsuit appears to have little chance of success. For instance, a nearly identical action in Michigan failed in 2005 when the state Supreme Court ruled that “the state has an obligation to protect the public trust. The state cannot take what it already owns.”

Perhaps the Ohio plaintiffs sense the weakness of their case, for they’ve repeatedly prevailed on State Senator Timothy Grendell (R-Chesterland), a noted property-rights advocate, to file legislation that would cede them the dry beach along virtually the entire Ohio shore. So even as the Lakefront Group argues in court that the law says shoreline residents own the beaches, it pushes legislation to change the law because it plainly says they don’t own the beaches.

Grendell’s bill doesn’t appear to have much chance either, because similar legislation has gone belly-up in each of the past three sessions.

So why would any politician pay attention to the gas and wind venting from a tiny minority of property-rights barkers in Ohio? Well, for one thing, people who can afford a house beside Lake Erie can afford to give campaign contributions.

On August 11, 2006, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ted Strickland sought favor with the ever louder, ever angrier Lakefront Group by serving up a rash, ill-researched campaign pledge: “I have concluded that the lakefront owners rightfully own the land as specified in their deeds. Our country was founded on a profound respect for private property rights, and a Strickland/ Fisher Administration will ensure the State of Ohio continues to value the rights of property owners.”

A day earlier, when Ohio’s environmental organizations asked Strickland how he intended to deal with the outlandish claims of the Lakefront Group, he told them he hadn’t made up his mind. Naturally, they were dismayed and appalled when, less than 24 hours later, he announced his decision. But Strickland’s campaign staff promised them the whole mess would be cleaned up after the election and instructed them not to say anything. So they didn’t.

The Lakefront Group, however, continued shouting. And on July 13, 2007—a Friday at the end of the workday, the hour when politicians make pronouncements they’d like the media to ignore—Governor Strickland’s office issued a radical new policy for shoreline management: “The state will honor the valid deeds of local property owners along the coast of Lake Erie. . . . As he has consistently stated for more than a year, Governor Strickland believes that apparently valid real property deeds must be honored unless a court of law determines that the deeds are limited by or subject to the public’s interest in those lands or are otherwise defective and/or unenforceable.”

“Note the mushy language,” observes Tinianow. “ ‘Apparently valid real property deeds’ is very interesting. So is ‘unless a court of law determines’ otherwise. I see this as a plea to the legal system to bail him out.”

The governor declined an interview with me, passing me off to his new ODNR director, Sean Logan, whom he had just divested of meaningful coastal-management authority. Logan struck me as a decent, competent man who wanted to accomplish the now-impossible tasks of doing and saying the right things. Prior to the governor’s declaration, Logan’s own agency had issued this one: “Public ownership of the lands of Lake Erie extends up to the ordinary high-water mark. The issue has been consistently addressed in the law of the United States and the State of Ohio.”

When I asked Logan if he didn’t think this about-face was a bit bizarre, he said: “Not bizarre. We’re actually being consistent because we’re going to administer the policy in this new way. In terms of protecting the actual resource, nothing’s going to change. We’re not going to permit chain-link fences. We’re not going to permit anything that would negatively impact shoreline habitat.” That’s easily said. But ODNR enforcement was lacking even before the governor surrendered the public trust. When I told Logan about the patently illegal signs and chain-link fencing Marnie Urso, David Kriska, and I had encountered, he said, “That’s news to us.”