Libertarian Party of Indiana Opposes Ball State University Land Grab

(Muncie, Indiana)  Ball State University’s plans to erect a $26 million dollar multi-use building near its Muncie campus has made no friends of small business owners in this college town located one hour northeast of Indianapolis.  The university plans call for a combination facility that would include a hotel, conference center and over 7,000 square feet for commercial tenants, restaurants and banks.

“They don’t want the competition from a small privately owned printing company,” claims Chris Hiatt, owner of the family run Hiatt Printing Company.  “We’ve been here forty years.  That’s apparently forty years long enough for the current university trustees and administration.”

Hiatt’s Muncie business stands on the property the university wants to erect the new building.  The university claims the facility is needed to provide an immersive learning experience to the students in its hospitality and hotel management program.  But, Hiatt views this as an issue of revenue and competition from a private sector company for printing services.  Unable to purchase his long-held business property, the university resorted to gaining favor with locally elected officials and began an eminent domain process against Hiatt’s business.  Predictably, a lower circuit court ruling was in the university’s favor.  The case is now pending an appeal.

“I’ll let the record speak for itself,” stated Hiatt.  “Ball State University started this process by instituting a printing policy that would restrict departments and professors’ ability to contract printing services off campus.  That directive was aimed squarely at my business and, honestly, has to some degree taken its toll on us.  We’re surviving, but it’s harder everyday — especially when you’re fighting against a state university that has taxpayers’ pockets of cash to spend against me.”

The record, in fact, does speak for itself.  Where other state universities have encouraged competition among printing vendors for their needs, Ball State University has moved forward with the most restrictive policy in the state.  The policy states:

“Departments may not contact commercial printers for quotes or estimates before the job has been reviewed by Printing Services as that practice is unfair to the commercial printers when Printing Services has the first right to determine if the job can be produced in house.  Printer representatives may be referred to Printing Services and/or University Marketing and Communications (UMC) to be assessed and added as approved vendors.”  The policy goes on to state, “The policy covers any large-quantity printing and photocopying, including course packs.”

A directive issued to faculty in 2011 pointed to this newly instituted policy, and inferred that no high-volume packets could be printed anywhere but at the Ball State Printing facilities.  It was later discovered by Hiatt that this policy actually only applied to university-owned projects paid for by the university directly and not those of the professors or their students.  However, while the university subsequently made a subtle change to their policy to clarify the issue, it was never officially communicated to the faculty and staff and the damage to Hiatt’s business had been made.

“This is clearly predatory against small business,” claimed Dan Drexler, Libertarian Party of Indiana State Chairman. “Why the university trustees and administration are more concerned with putting a small business under than they are with their flagging academic performance and reputation is beyond us.  We are exploring different avenues for advocacy, including seeing what interest The Institute for Justice may have in this case.  Maybe having the nation’s leading property rights advocate advising will help provide some much needed balance in this dispute with the university.”

“Hiatt Printing has been a local institution for decades around the campus and in the community.  The LPIN has long been an advocate for property rights and the efforts of small business.  It is a natural fit for us to use what tools we can to bring attention to this case,” Drexler continued.

Ultimately, the question of the “public use,” as is required for any eminent domain proceeding will be at the center of this fight.