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for less onerous alternatives to achieving regulatory goals or to calculate the cost of compensating a landowner if it becomes necessary under federal law. A few states do have compensation laws on the books. In Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota and Texas, the laws allow landowners to sue governments for com- pensation when the value of a parcel of land is reduced by a certain percentage, ranging from 20 percent in Louisiana to 50 percent in North Dakota. But the laws are not comprehensive in scope: Louisiana's and Mississippi's apply only to agricultural or forest land. In May, Florida passed a narrowly tailored compensation bill with no percentage specified. It includes a mediation element to settle disputes. What has happened in most states is that the property rights revolution has encountered fiscal reality. Many of those who sympathize with property owners' cries for compensation have balked at price tags that could total millions of dol- lars even for small local governments. "It's a hot political issue," says David Broadwell, staff attorney with the Colorado Municipal League, "but when people start crunching the numbers �� Ralph Butler illustration on how much it will cost, either through administrative requirements or direct compensation, it causes people to gag a little." The gag reflex was at work in Col- orado, where takings bills died in the House Appropriations Committee in 1994 and 1995. Analysts told the lawmak- ers that this year's bill would cost nearly a million dollars for administrative work alone in the first year. Costs for compen- sating landowners were pegged at $19 million a year —and those were consid- ered conservative estimates. In New Hampshire, a consultant working for environmental groups esti- mated that takings laws under considera- tion in 1993 and 1994 would have forced the town of Dunbarton to shell out about $2 million -118 percent of the annual budget for the town of 1,800. Laconia, with 16,000 people, would have faced a price tag of $8 million. The numbers were based on the assumption that tak- ings claims would be made for only 2 percent of the vacant developable land in the communities. The bills were defeated, as was a milder impact - assessment measure introduced this year. nents of a property rights initiative on next month's ballot are predicting huge financial consequences if it passes. The ambiguously written measure seems to make state and local governments liable to landowners for any decrease in the value of their property resulting from government actions; some are interpret- ing that to mean that the owner of a $100,000 piece of land whose value was diminished by 10 percent would be enti- tled to $10,000 in compensation. The state's Office of Financial Man- agement did a study of 14 small jurisdic- tions and concluded that the biennial cost of preparing the necessary economic analyses of regulations would be $207 million —even before the first compensa- tion check was cut. Another 250 counties, cities and special purpose districts also would be affected. The potential costs and administrative burdens have drawn the opposition of the Environmental and Land Use Law Sec- tion of the Washington Bar Association. "It seems to take a nuclear bomb approach to solving the problem," says T. Ryan Durkan, who heads the section. Stories are even circulating about land speculation — supposedly, speculators are snapping up parcels of land in hopes of a bonanza in compensation payments if the initiative passes. For the most part, though, it is advo- cates of property rights laws who are telling the horror stories. In Washougal, Washington, Lois Jemtegaard told the local newspaper about being unable to sell a 20 -acre par- cel of pasture on property she and her husband had been amassing in pieces since 1938. When prospective buyers wanted assurance they could build on the property, Jemtegaard inquired about a building permit. She was told she would be unable to get one because Con- 1_ gress had designated the property as a national scenic area in 1986. �. Her property's value plum- meted. A farmer in Camden .•r County, North Carolina, told a congressional panel -he was prevented from farm- �=ing more than 300 acres because they were classi- «c- fled as wetlands. A devel- oper from Wayne County, North Carolina, testified he was unable to turn his cattle farm into a $5 million golf course