The Government Threatened To Seize His Home Over Tall Grass
Better mow your lawn.
If you don't, your town government may fine you thousands of dollars a day.
Worse, if you can't pay the fine, they may confiscate your home.
Six years ago, in Dunedin, Florida, Jim Ficken let his grass grow.
His mom had died, and he'd left town to take care of her estate. He asked a friend to cut his grass, but that friend died, too!
In the two months Ficken was away, his grass grew taller than 10 inches.
City bureaucrats started fining him.
But they didn't tell Ficken that. When he finally got back, there was no notice of the $500-a-day fine. Only when he ran into a "code enforcement officer" did he learn he'd be getting "a big bill."
When the bill came, it was for $24,454.
Ficken quickly mowed his lawn. Then the city tacked on another $5,000 for "non-compliance."
Ficken didn't have that much money, so city officials told him they would take his home.
Fortunately, Ficken discovered the libertarian law firm, the Institute for Justice (I.J.), which fights government abuse.
I.J. lawyer Ari Bargil took on Ficken's case, arguing that the $30,000 fine violates the Constitution's limits on "excessive bail, fines, and cruel punishments."
But a judge ruled that the fine was "not excessive."
Of course, judges are just lawyers with robes. Often they are lawyers/bureaucrats who've become very comfortable with big government.
I call a $30,000 penalty for not cutting your lawn absurdly excessive.
IJ attorney Bargil told local news stations, "If $30,000 for tall grass in Florida is not excessive, it is hard to imagine what is."
Dunedin's politicians often impose heavy fines for minor transgressions.
One resident told us, "They [fined] me $32,000 for a hole the size of a quarter in my stucco" and also "for a lawn mower in my yard….They fine people that they can pick on and then they keep picking on them."
It happens elsewhere, too.
Charlotte, North Carolina, fined a church for "excessive pruning."
Danbury, Connecticut, charged a resident $200,000 for leaving his yard messy.
Bargil notes, "It's pretty apparent that code enforcement is a major cash cow."
In just five and a half years, Dunedin collected $3.6 million in fines.
But by then, I and others had noticed. We were reporting on Dunedin's heavy fines.
So did the politicians sheepishly acknowledge that they had milked citizens with excessive fines and give the money back?
Of course not. They hired a PR firm. That cost taxpayers another $25,000 a month.
Politicians care mostly about themselves.
After the Institute for Justice filed a second lawsuit, Dunedin agreed that Ficken could pay less: $10,000.
Still too much, but Ficken agreed.
"Our Founders," says Bargil, "recognized that the ability to fine is the ability to cripple. It's one of the ways, other than incarceration, that government can really oppress."
Government routinely oppresses. For six long years, Dunedin's politicians oppressed Jim Ficken.
COPYRIGHT 2025 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.
The post The Government Threatened To Seize His Home Over Tall Grass appeared first on Reason.com.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hill
an hour ago
- The Hill
DNC chair says Democrats ‘absolutely' ready to fight back against GOP redistricting
Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Ken Martin said on Sunday that Democrats are 'absolutely' well positioned to fight back against Republicans redistricting efforts. Martin was asked in an interview on NewsNation's 'The Hill Sunday,' whether Democrats are 'really in a position to fight back on this,' considering states like California would likely need to change the law would likely need to change for Democrats to undertake the same effort. 'Absolutely we are, whether it's in the courts, whether it's organizing on the ground, which we've been doing,' Martin said in the interview. Martin said he views the redistricting effort as unconstitutional but said Democrats are ready to play the Republicans's game. 'The reality is what we've seen already is a craven power grab, an unconstitutional power grab, in my mind,' Martin said. 'Look, the Constitution says very clearly that we have a decennial census. We draw the lines after that. The state legislatures are allowed to do that, but it does not give them the power to essentially redraw the lines whenever the hell they want to do it. And what Texas is doing right now is a craven power grab.' At the same time, he added, 'We're going to fight fire with fire.' 'If Texas wants a showdown, which they clearly do, we're going to give them the showdown,' Martin said. Martin said he's talked to Democrats around the country about potentially undertaking similar redistricting efforts. 'And I've talked with a number of Democratic governors around the country, and as you can tell, they're already preparing to follow suit here.'
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Biden laments over Trump's handling of the presidency in speech: ‘These are dark days'
Former President Joe Biden blasted his predecessor and successor in the Oval Office, President Donald Trump, in a speech at the National Bar Association's Centennial Convention in Chicago on Thursday night. Biden said he was 'proud I've appointed judges doing their best to be independent, fair, and impartial, respecting the rule of law, upholding the Constitution. I wish I could say the same for the executive branch.' The 82-year-old said Trump was 'doing his best to dismantle the Constitution.' Saying that he was 'deadly earnest,' Biden lamented that Congress was 'just sitting on the sidelines' and that the Supreme Court was enabling the president's worst impulses. 'The rulings they made, my God,' said Biden. The former president said, 'There are moments …that forced us to confront hard truths about ourselves, our institutions, and democracy itself. We are, in my view, at such a moment in American history, reflected in every cruel executive outreach, every rollback of basic freedoms, every erosion of long-standing established precedent.' 'Watching immigrants who are in this country legally, torn from the arms of their family, dragged away in handcuffs, the only home they've ever known,' said Biden. 'My friends, we need to face the hard truths of this administration.' He argued the Trump administration's goals have been to 'erase all the gains' from his own time in the White House, and 'to erase history rather than make it, to erase fairness, equality, to erase justice itself. And that's not hyperbole, that's a fact.' 'Look, folks, you can't sugarcoat this. These are dark days, but you're all here for the same reason. I left that prestigious law firm … to go to the defender's office years ago, it's because our future is literally on the line,' he added. Biden accepted an award from the association following his 22-minute speech, in which he criticized the president without mentioning him by name. The former president was awarded the association's highest honor, named after its founder, C. Frances Stratford. The National Bar Association is the country's oldest and largest national association of mostly African American attorneys, judges, law professors, and students. Biden's speech targeting the president came as a group of federal judges has asked U.S. political leaders to tone down their rhetoric and ease their attacks on members of the judicial system after a spike in intimidation and death threats. The group Speak Up for Justice hosted a forum on Thursday where a number of judges spoke of their experiences of receiving hatred and harassment. While Trump was not named, Esther Salas, a District Court judge in New Jersey, said attacks came from the 'top down.' 'The fix check is so easy in some ways, right, because what we need is our political leaders from the top down to stop fanning these flames, to stop using irresponsible rhetoric, to stop referring to judges as corrupt and biased and monsters that hate America. We need our leaders to lead responsibly,' said Salas Thursday. 'Stop demonizing us, stop villainizing us, because what they're doing when they do that irresponsible rhetoric is they are inviting people to do us harm… because our leaders are calling us idiots and deranged, and monsters,' she added.
Time Magazine
3 hours ago
- Time Magazine
Trump Tells Schumer to 'Go to Hell' as Talks Break Down
After hours of deliberation over President Donald Trump's stalled nominees, tensions between Senate Democrats and the White House reached a boiling point on Saturday evening. In a row that spilled over to social media, the President said that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer can 'go to hell.' In a post on Truth Social, Trump instructed Republicans not to make a deal with the Democrats, who he claimed were making 'egregious and unprecedented' demands in order to 'approve a small number of our highly qualified nominees.' 'Tell Schumer, who is under tremendous political pressure from within his own party, the radical left lunatics, to go to hell,' Trump said. 'Do not accept the offer, go home and explain to your constituents what bad people the Democrats are, and what a great job the Republicans are doing, and have done, for our country.' The stalemate is particularly poignant as the Senate has now embarked on its monthlong August recess. Democrats have largely denied fast unanimous consent votes regarding Trump's nominees, instead opting for roll calls. Addressing the Republican Party's complaints over this, Schumer said on Saturday: 'Historically bad nominees deserve historic levels of scrutiny. We have never seen nominees as flawed, as compromised, as unqualified as Trump's.' Schumer also addressed Trump's social media commentary, during which the President instructed Republicans to 'go home' and called for Schumer to 'go to hell.' 'Donald Trump attempted to steamroll the Senate to put in place his historically unqualified nominees, but Senate Democrats wouldn't let him,' Schumer said in a filmed address. 'In a fit of rage, Trump threw in the towel, sent Republicans home, and was unable to do the basic work of negotiating. Is this the 'art of the deal?'' 'Trump tried to bully us, go around us, threaten us, call us names, but he got nothing. He walked away with his tail between his legs.' Read More: In Averting a Shutdown, Schumer Ignites a Rebellion The lack of progress ahead of the August recess comes after Senate Majority Leader John Thune on Thursday accused Democrats of deciding 'to slow-walk every single civilian nomination from the President.' Thune said that in recent history, Presidents have had the majority of their nominees approved by unanimous consent or voice vote, but that 'zero' of Trump's civilian nominees had been confirmed by those means by Democrats this Congress. Thune vowed that Republicans would 'figure out a way to change it' if there's no progress moving forward. Shortly before Trump called time on the negotiations on Saturday, some GOP Senators aired ideas for alternative ways to advance Trump's nominees. Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas said: "The Senate should immediately adjourn and let President Trump use recess appointments to enact the agenda 77M Americans voted for.' Recess appointments refer to when a President can 'make temporary appointments when the Senate is not in session,' according to the Constitution. It enables a President to appoint their chosen nominees without Senate confirmation. Shortly after his election in November, Trump spoke out in favor of recess appointments. 'Any Republican Senator seeking the coveted leadership position in the United States Senate must agree to recess appointments (in the Senate), without which we will not be able to get people confirmed in a timely manner,' he said via a post on Truth Social. Later that same month, Thune said that 'all the options' would remain on the table to help the advancement of Trump's picks. Read More: Why Trump's Talk of Recess Appointments Is Dangerous There have also been reports that GOP Senators could, at some point, seek to change the Senate rules in order to confirm more Trump nominees. Amid discussion surrounding this earlier in the week, Sen. Alex Padilla of California, a Democrat and ranking member of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, urged caution. 'We can and should have thoughtful, bipartisan conversations in the Rules Committee on updating the confirmation process for the future, but Republicans should keep in mind that if they choose to go nuclear—yet again—it will have consequences long beyond Donald Trump's presidency,' Padilla warned in an online statement.
