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Michael Davis
Michael Hubbard
Judd Bradbury
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03/27/06 What's a felony
when you're rich?
This Billingsley/Coppell thing really ticks me off.
The Billingsley's are actually suing the City of Coppell and the Coppell School
District because those government entities are using their right of eminent
domain to take private land for schools and parks.
Imagine that? A city and school district using eminent domain to take land
for true public use.
If those poor people over in Arlington who lost their home to Arkansas
Billionaire Jerry Jones had the financial resources of Lucy and Henry
Billingsley, they might not have lost their homes. Their homes weren't
taken for a valid eminent domain use, like a school or a park. Their homes
were stolen to give to a Billionaire a football stadium -- a new place to do
business. Very few of those poor people who lost their homes will be able
to afford a ticket to Grandpa Jones' new stadium.
Check out this story by Eric Aasen:
 |
Developer
sues city over land;
Coppell:
Firm seeks damages over use of eminent domain
Saturday, March 25, 2006
By ERIC AASEN / The Dallas
Morning News |
The game of hardball has escalated in
the North Lake residential development battle between the city of Coppell
and Billingsley Co.
The developer has filed a lawsuit
against the city that seeks monetary damages resulting from the suburb's
attempt to seize the private land near the lake in northwest Dallas.
Coppell is
improperly using eminent domain to take the Billingsley property,
company attorneys say. The suburb has no legal authority to interfere with
the property and is illegally attempting to take property outside its city
limits, the suit states.
... Clay Phillips, Coppell's deputy city manager,
said he isn't surprised by the suit, which lists the city, Mayor Doug Stover
and City Council members as defendants.
... Coppell city and school officials have filed
condemnation proceedings against Billingsley, which wants to fill its land
with houses, townhomes, apartments and shops in a project that borders the
suburb.
Coppell opposes the Cypress Waters
project in part because of the large number of housing units being proposed.
The number is unclear, having ranged from the company's early estimate of
3,900 multifamily units to Coppell's more recent
estimate of 10,000 units.
This week's suit alleges that the
city has participated in a "concerted effort to thwart the development of
the property" and is trying to "coerce and intimidate" Billingsley into
altering its plans.
.... Eddie Vassallo, Billingsley's lead attorney in the condemnation
matter.
Coppell's "plan is to devalue the
Billingsley's use of the property," he said Friday. "That's their only
plan."
Most of the Billingsley land is in
the Coppell Independent School District. Suburban officials are concerned
that Cypress Waters residents will overcrowd Coppell schools, congest
streets and overwhelm city programs.
... Coppell released a statement Friday
saying the Billingsley lawsuit is "just another of the badly motivated
steps" that the developer has undertaken to "totally ignore the valid
land-use interests of the region."
"City officials will not be deterred
by these retaliatory actions into withdrawing their condemnation
proceedings," Coppell city attorney Robert Hager said in the written
statement.
Coppell city and school officials
filed condemnation proceedings against Billingsley after extending offers to
buy some of the company's land. The city and school
district would use the land for schools, parks and senior and "affordable
workforce" housing.
... Mr. Vassallo said the suburb's actions have
resulted in damages reaching into the tens of millions of dollars.
Billingsley is moving forward with Cypress Waters, but it can't get builders
to commit because of litigation threats, he said.
... Dallas officials have been angry about
Coppell's interference with development in their city.
But their petition seeking depositions from Coppell officials regarding
condemnation claims was denied recently, Coppell and Billingsley
officials say. Dallas officials couldn't be reached for comment Friday. |
I've already asked, why is the
Dallas City Attorney spending our public monies for the benefit of the
Billingsley's? They don't even live in Dallas. They reside in the
Park Cities. It's not like they don't have more money than the City of
Dallas, much less the City of Coppell. This is not the problem of the City
of Dallas. It's actually better for Dallas taxpayers if the City of
Coppell and Coppell ISD prevail against Lucy and Henry Billingsley. It's
going to cost us millions more than any tax revenue we might see from the
development. We will have to build a fire station over there and possibly
a police substation because there's nothing in the area close enough to get to
all those apartments in a hurry.
Besides, the Billingsley's have much better lawyers than the lawyers on the
Dallas City Attorney's staff.
Back when Henry Billingsley was smuggling Libyans across the Mexican border, he
was able to get a 6-month sentence in a "half-way" house rather than the 6 years
in prison he could have and deserved for his crime.
 |
The Crow-Qadhafi Connection;
How a mythic Texas family won
the gratitude of a dictator
By
Miriam Rozen - Article Published Dec 22, 1994 |
Every October,
Trammell Crow, the legendary Dallas real estate developer, hosts a camp-out
for rich and powerful men at his East Texas farm.
... Sleeping in tents, the developer's
high-profile guests engage in the kind of high-testosterone activities that
would highlight a Boy Scout outing. They ride horses, shoot skeet, and play
war games with painted faces and pellet guns. At night, the campers listen
to fireside lectures on such topics as advances in cancer research. The
objective, invitees are informed: simply to relax.
Describing the annual affair in a
1992 letter to John McCarthy, then U.S. Ambassador to Tunisia, Crow himself
wrote: "There is no purpose other than building camaraderie through sharing
this time in the woods."
Crow dispatched his missive to
McCarthy on October 1, 1992, because he wanted the ambassador to help him
secure a visa into the United States for a very special camper: Mohamed El
Bukhari, the Treasury Minister of Libya--and among the closest advisers to
internationally reviled dictator Muammar al-Qadhafi.
President George Bush had branded the
Libyan leader "an egomaniac who would trigger World War III just to make
headlines." President Ronald Reagan had sent American warplanes to drop
bombs on Qadhafi in 1986. And the U.S. had imposed sweeping economic
sanctions on Libya, barring trade with the country or its citizens after
Qadhafi refused to extradite two Libyan intelligence agents indicted in the
bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland--a terrorist incident
that claimed 270 lives.
Yet Dallas millionaire Trammell Crow
.... was seeking to pull strings so Qadhafi's aide could enjoy his
hospitality and rub elbows with powerful Americans. "...I believe his
joining this casual encounter could be a fruitful and pleasurable time for
all campers," Crow wrote McCarthy.
El
Bukhari never obtained a visa--from the American ambassador or anyone else
in the State Department. Yet the Libyan made it to Crow's affair anyway.
Prosecutors in the U.S.
Attorney's Office in Washington, D.C. now suspect he did so illegally, with
more of the Crow family's help. They are investigating whether Crow's
son-in-law, Henry Billingsley, helped smuggle the Libyan into the country by
slipping him across the Mexican border near Harlingen.
...
Trammell Crow declined all comment for this story. Henry
Billingsley and his wife, Lucy Crow, also declined several Observer requests
for comment.
... Asked about his financial relationship with
Libya, Billingsley told U.S. News in 1993: "I have not done any business
with that country."
... But Washington-based federal prosecutors, with
the help of a 1993 raid on Henry Billingsley's offices in downtown Dallas,
have gathered more than 2,000 pages of documents. The material includes
ticket stubs, personal calendars, letters, and contracts.
The Dallas Observer obtained copies
of dozens of these documents from Natasha Geddie, a trained paralegal who
worked as Lucy Crow's personal assistant for several months in the fall of
1992. A tip from Geddie sparked prosecutors' inquiry into the Crow family's
contacts with El Bukhari. ... |
The rules are different for
those with the gold -- after all they rule. Don't they?
|
|
Smuggler's blues;
Crow son-in-law gets six months in a
Dallas halfway house for his dealings witha Libyan finance minister
By
Miriam Rozen Article Published Sep 26, 1996 |
Henry Billingsley, the son-in-law of
Dallas real-estate developer Trammell Crow, has been sentenced to six months
in a halfway house and three years' probation for his illegal dealings with
a Libyan finance minister.
Billingsley had pleaded guilty in
July to charges of smuggling Mohammed Bukhari across the Mexican border into
Texas in October 1992 so that the Libyan official could attend a two-day
gathering of politicians and businessmen. The gathering, which took place at
a campsite in East Texas, is arranged annually by the Crows.
The Dallas Observer reported the
smuggling incident in a December 22, 1994, cover story, "The Crow-Qadhafi
connection." The article gave the first detailed account of Billingsley's
attempt to offer the Libyan a chance to talk with U.S. politicians about
lifting trade sanctions against that country. At the same time the article
reported--and court documents later confirmed--that Billingsley hoped to
encourage the Libyan to buy some 200 million dollars' worth of Dallas-area
land that the Crow son-in-law wanted to sell.
Federal laws--enacted
in response to the Libyan government's willingness to harbor terrorists such
as those alleged to be responsible for the Pan Am jet bombing that killed
270 people over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988--bar U.S.
citizens from engaging in business with individuals or representatives of
that country.
According to federal sentencing
guidelines, Billingsley could have received a sentence
of as much as six months in prison. But U.S. District Judge Joyce Hens Green
opted last week in Washington, D.C., for the lighter sentence of six months
in a community confinement center and probation.
... Billingsley is scheduled to serve out his time
at a halfway house in the Dallas area. The specific site has not yet been
chosen, according to a probation officer assigned to the case.
... |
Does that just make you sick?
Nothing makes me angrier than when public officials have double standards.
Several Dallas council members were outraged that anyone would deny the
Billingsley's anything they want. They must assume all elected officials
are as awed by great wealth as the Dallas City Council. It flies in the
face of our council's frame of reference to have an entire city council in two
other cities unified in their fight to protect the people they were elected to
serve. It's very hard for most of our council to say "No" to any Park
Cities resident.
If the City of Arlington was facing this dilemma rather than Irving or Coppell,
Arlington would be offering money to the Billingsley's to ruin the quality of
life for a segment of their community, particularly if that segment of the
community is poor or of modest income, or moderately wealthy.
Eminent domain is supposed to be used for things like bridges, police or fire
stations, schools, parks, etc. It was not intended to be used to take one
individual's property to give to another private investor. The
Billingsley's must not remember that Intervest Properties had long-standing
plans for their land near the Perot/Hicks Arena. They had acquired their
land and got the rezoning , etc. before anyone thought about dumping a sports
arena down there. The Arena gang claimed it was a blighted and
undeveloped area, when it was actually blocks from the Crescent and Turtle Creek
and million-dollar condos in Oak Lawn.
Allowing Ross, Jr. and Tommy Hicks to use the City's eminent domain rights to
take Intervest's property so they could develop the land themselves was wrong
then, and it's wrong now. That sports arena is not a public property; it's
a private enterprise for Mark Cuban and Tom Hicks. Just like the stadium
in Arlington will be a private enterprise for Grandpa Jerry Jones.
Coppell and Coppell ISD using their right of eminent domain to take some of the
Billingsley's property to build new schools and parks (which the Billingsley's
mammoth project will necessitate) is an appropriate use of eminent domain.
It looks like the Billingsley's aren't doing as well in this legal go round as
Henry did in federal court back in 1994, since the City's "petition
seeking depositions from Coppell officials regarding condemnation claims was
denied recently".
Guess the Billingsley's better rely on their high priced lawyers rather than try
for another free ride on the backs of Dallas taxpayers.
Does it bother you that the wants of a convicted felon has more clout at Dallas
City Hall than the needs of your neighborhood?
Does it bother you that the City Councils of Irving and Coppell care more about
their constituents than sucking up to a greedy, rich and connected couple?
It bothers me.
sb
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