Another Federal Assault On Property Rights:

The House Committee on Natural Resources has reported out the Journey Through Hallowed Ground National Heritage Area Act (H.R. 319)—a badly flawed bill introduced by Representative Frank Wolf(R–VA).1 The bill would give a handful of Virginia environmentalists and wealthy landowners extraordinary powers over how private property can be used in a broad swath of land stretching from southern Pennsylvania through western Maryland south to Charlottesville in central Virginia.

This group has organized itself as the Journey Through Hallowed Ground Partnership, a not-for profit Virginia corporation. H.R. 319 would provide the partnership $1 million of federal money per year to operate this multistate land use planning exercise. The bill would also authorize the Secretary of the Interior to work in partnership with the group through the National Park Service (NPS).

Many critics believe that, if enacted, H.R. 319 would significantly threaten the rights of many private property owners living in the designated area while providing a financial windfall to a select group of landowners who have already developed their properties. At risk would be the housing and homeownership opportunities for middle-income and moderate income families through exclusionary zoning and other legal mechanisms that are used to upgrade a community’s demographic profile.