Oregonians now reject Measure 37

A few years of watching the Measure 37 nightmare unfold has turned Oregonians off to this ill-considered effort to trash the state’s land use laws. A poll finds that Oregon voters would now reject Measure 37 by a wide margin (48 percent “no” to only 29 percent “yes”).

So much for the flimsy argument that Oregonians support mining in a national monument and putting a gravel pit in a residential neighborhood—two real-life examples of Measure 37 claims—just because it passed with 61 percent of the vote in 2004.

As I noted in a previous post, voters were conned by Oregonians in Action and other opponents of land use planning into believing that Measure 37 was all about fairness. In reality it unfairly created a privileged class of property owners who don’t have to comply with laws that apply to everyone else.

Loaded Orygun and the Sightline Institute summarize other key findings of the poll. (Full results of the poll, which was commissioned by the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund and the Isaak Walton League of America, are described here).

Yesterday Laurel took part in a Vancouver, Washington press conference where she and a neighbor, Don Dean, talked about the danger a nearby Measure 37 claim poses to the groundwater in our area.

Wednesday my wife got her fifteen seconds of quasi-fame on a KOIN news segment which I fortuitously taped after Laurel phoned and told me that a Portland TV station had interviewed her.

Miracle of miracles, today for the first time I figured out how to upload a television clip of the KOIN news story to YouTube. Have a watch, if you've got a fairly fast Internet connection. Laurel makes good sense. She wasn't wild about how she looked on TV, though. Few people are.

Comments

[torridjoe]

Very cool, Laurel! You did a very nice job.

TJ

[Dan]

"She wasn't wild about how she looked on TV, though. Few people are."

I'll bet she smacked you a good one for that! :)

[Rain]

She looked just fine and made good sense. I just wish we could undo that measure as it worries me where it'll end up. People thought it was about one person being able to build one extra house for family or on land they bought earlier for that purpose but it has turned out to be a developer's dream. It's all about making a lot of money for a few people and leaving behind nightmares for the rest of us.

[Brian]

Dan, I get smacked--figuratively--for many things by my wife. But she was the one who kept saying, "Ooh, I don't like how I look, how I keep nodding my head."

The biggest smack risk to me was putting the news clip out for public viewing, not commenting about how Laurel saw herself.

Still, a husband always should seek wifely redemption, even if it doesn't seem to be needed (since I'll surely require redemption credits soon, if not now).

So I'll say, sincerely and truly, that Laurel looks much, much better in person than on that news segment. Every day I feel grateful that I'm married to a woman who looks way younger than her years.

[Dan]

And I'm grateful you and your wife are pursuing this issue, all joking aside. :)

[proud lefty]

Both California and Idaho have measures on their mid-term ballots that are similar to Measure 37. California's, called Proposition 90, is exactly like Measure 37 and has some of the same scare tactic ads that were used in Oregon. I was streaming KGO810 from San Francisco and I thought I was having deja vu. I heard a report out of Sun Valley, Idaho at a city planning meeting where they were all set to pass a city-wide ordinance LIMITING houses to 12,000 square feet in size. Except the meeting was packed with developers who convinced city planners that rich people should be allowed "to realize the fruits of their labors and build trophy homes." The report stated that they wanted to table any more land use legislation until Idaho voters have a chance to vote on their land use measure called Measure 2 (I believe), similar to Measure 37. Is this the new wild wild west?