HinesSight

Dems poised to fail on Measure 37 fix. I’m bummed.

This is serious. We're on a Hawaii vacation and Measure 37 is meddling with my Maui mellow.

It looks like back home in Oregon the Land Use Fairness Committee (six Democrats, four Republicans) is about to bail out on fixing this environmental, social, and economic land use disaster.

In fact, given the three hour time difference between Napili Bay and Salem, they may already have done the gutless deed.

If not, I'm pleased to offer in advance an outrage retraction—but given all the signs to the contrary, I'm going to vent my current frustration so I can move my psyche on to more pleasant subjects, like a late afternoon beach stroll.

We were just emailed proposed amendments to HB 3540. It looks like this bill contains all of the positive elements of the Measure 37 fix that the committee has been holding hearings on, such as limiting large subdivisions on high value farmland and groundwater limited areas.

That's pretty damn uncontroversial. We've sat through several of the Land Use Fairness Committee hearings. We've read all there is to read about Measure 37, pretty near.

And we've never heard anyone, other than the claimants who want to build those large subdivisions, defending the trashing of Oregon's agriculture industry and groundwater supply.

So it's astonishing, beyond belief, that the Democratic leadership is considering a bill that describes desperately needed fixes to Measure 37, yet ends with:

This 2007 Act shall be submitted to the people for their approval or rejection at a special election held throughout this state.

Great, just great. The election apparently would be held in November. If the fix was approved by voters, it would go into effect in December, we've been told.

That's seven months of Full Speed Ahead! on Measure 37 subdivision claims, many of which would be vested (since building permits would have been issued and construction started), leaving them immune to the limits imposed by the fix.

Useless. I've written the Dems on the Land Use Fairness Committee, telling them it'd be better for them to admit that they've failed Oregon and do nothing, than put this half-assed measure on the ballot.

Correction: quarter-assed. Because the proposed Measure 37 fix already gives away a lot to claimants. And now the legislature is poised to give away more—eight months of free rein to rape Oregon's farmland and aquifers in groundwater limited areas.

If you care about Oregon, and you're not depressed enough already, check out the reports here and here about the impending Democratic surrender to Oregonians in Action.

It's a sad day, even on beautiful Maui.

Senators Prozanski and Schrader, you should be ashamed of yourselves. Read and weep.

Prozanski had favored voter referral all along, but the Legislature had come under great pressure to craft a fix of its own. Schrader endorsed the move back to voter referral, saying that was the most democratic solution. "Voters tend to do the right thing," he said.

No, not always. Remember Measure 37, Sen. Schrader? Voters were conned into voting for this travesty. You were supposed to fix it. And didn't.

Are Dems going to bail on Measure 37 fix?

Come on, Democrats in the Oregon legislature, this is the time to show you've got some big cojones. (Yes, you too, female legislators.)

There are disturbing signs that the ten-member joint Committee on Land Use Fairness, which has six Democrats, may wuss out on the sort of Measure 37 fix that Oregonians are calling for.

A recent poll found that more than two-thirds of voters either want to fix what they see as significant flaws in Measure 37 or believe that it should be repealed entirely.

Today the state's largest newspaper, the Oregonian, ran a lead editorial titled "Find the guts to fix Measure 37." I couldn't find the editorial online for some reason, so scanned it—double click on the image to enlarge. The editorial board said:

"If legislators don't act, they will tip the state forever to developers and private interests. Legislators would tell farmers to forget it, to abandon the quintessentially Oregon notion of enlightened self-interest coinciding with the community's. It would be replaced by each individual pursuing his own private Oregon.

There won't be a second chance. Right now, Measure 37 developers are rushing for building permits to put a shovel in the ground to finalize their property rights. This takes a claim past the point of no return, past the point where legislators can actually intervene and stop development gone wild.

By 2009, it will be too late to reverse the damage.

Everyone would have preferred a consensus fix for Measure 37, but now there's not much time left. Now Oregon just needs a fix."

Amen to that. My wife and I have testified at several of the Land Use Fairness committee hearings. Aside from the Measure 37 claimants themselves, there is precious little sympathy for those who want to build large subdivisions on farmland. Even many of the claimants say, "I just want to be able to put a house on my property. I'm opposed to Measure 37 subdivisions."

So why is it that the committee has scheduled a hearing on HB 3546, which would extend the deadline for counties to process Measure 37 claims? 1000 Friends of Oregon is concerned about this. They say:

It extends government review of claims and is being introduced at a very late date. Measure 37 supporters have been lobbying the legislature for just such an extension while demanding "hands off" Measure 37. HB 3546 does nothing to fix the damage that Measure 37 has brought to Oregonians. We must encourage the Land Use Fairness Committee to fix Measure 37, not extend it.

Yesterday I sent an email to the members of the Land Use Fairness committee expressing my own concern, on behalf of our neighborhood's Keep Our Water Safe committee. We live in a groundwater limited area in south Salem, adjacent to a proposed 43-lot (and wells) Measure 37 subdivision. Download email_to_land_use_fairness_committee.doc

We can't afford for legislators to take their own sweet time fussing around with a Measure 37 fix. Once the wells are dug and our aquifer starts going dry, it's too late. The time to act is now.

If Oregonians in Action and other die-hard proponents of Measure 37 don't like the fix, they can try to get another measure on the 2008 ballot. Let's see if the state's voters would fall for Oregonians in Action untruths again. I doubt it.

Here's the truth, according to a land use expert who describes himself as a "crass, unrepentant, real estate capitalist Republican type." Yet says:

So let's begin with the most commonly heard argument: It's my property and I have the right to do with it as I please. Well is there a right to own property? Absolutely. Is there a right to use property? Absolutely. Is either the right to own or the right to use absolute? Absolutely not!

… It amazes me that elected officials who go home at night and tell their kids "just say no" to drugs can't muster the political responsibility to "just say no" to any developer who happens to come down the pike.

Land use controls are, in fact, a capitalist plot to optimize the property values of the majority of owners, not some communist conspiracy to deprive individuals of some imaginary "property rights".

I met John Christensen at one of the Land Use Fairness committee hearings. He's a Corbett resident and a Democratic activist. Like me, he's worried that Democrats are going to cave in to Republican pressure. To its credit, the Multnomah Democrats web site has posted John's letter to "fellow Democrats."

He points out that Rep. Patti Smith, a Republican, represents his district. She also is on the Land Use Fairness committee. Rep. Smith's family has filed a Measure 37 claim for over $29 million in an effort to get a waiver for over 200 buildable lots.

That's almost a laughable (if it weren't deadly serious) conflict of interest. What chance is there of Rep. Smith voting against her own financial self-interest? Just about zero.

As the Eugene Register-Guard reported, "Measure 37 is paying off for big donors." Some of those who helped finance the campaign to pass Measure 37 have filed claims that would give them a huge return on their political investment. Just as Rep. Smith's family stands to gain a lot from her efforts to leave Measure 37 as it is.

That's outrageous. Democrats have both the moral and political high ground on this issue. They need to move boldly. Soon.

With as much urging as possible. You can contact members of the Land Use Fairness committee individually by email via this web page. Or if you want to make your concern known at one swoop, use Onward Oregon.

The Oregonian editorial lays out what is at stake for this state.

The battle over property-rights Measure 37 has turned into a tug of war over who inherits Oregon. In the future, will it be "mine" or "ours"?

On one side are 7,500 property owners who have filed private claims under Measure 37 seeking more than $12.6 billion in compensation. They know there's no money, but they want houses, subdivisions, strip malls and other developments on hundreds of thousands of acres of prime farmland and forestland. Many claimants would tell you it's not for themselves, of course, but for "my grandchildren."

On the other side are their neighbors and the rest of us, a group that could be loosely described as the Oregon public. This includes thousands of farmers whose livelihoods are threatened by Measure 37-spawned developments, along with millions of other Oregonians who depend on the state's $4.3 billion ag industry.

None of us is really a disinterested party either. We have our own economic claim, only it's public, not private. We want to protect the long-term health and wealth of our communities, our state, and, yes, our grandchildren. The Legislature must pick between these competing heirs.

Measure 37 claimants, read this

I hope some of those who've applied for waivers of Oregon's land use laws under Measure 37 will read this post.

I've listened to many of you testify at the legislature's Land Use Fairness Committee hearings. We've passed each other in the hall, you with your white and red "I (heart) Measure 37" sticker, me with my green "Fix Measure 37."

You probably feel misunderstood and put upon. Well, so do I.

You can't understand why people like me don't want you to be able to develop your property in the way that was allowed when you acquired it. I can't understand why people like you don't realize that those of us already living next to a Measure 37 claim also have rights—to use our property in the way we could when we bought it.

If you'll read my blog post, I'll read yours. Just point me to it. So here's how a Fix Measure 37 proponent sees things.

At the moment. For the whole history of my involvement with Measure 37, click on that category in the column to the left. Then scroll past this post, which will be on top, and go back into time with my land use writings.

Kind of like your claim, if approved, lets you go back in time to when you bought your property, waiving laws and regulations passed after that. That seems fair to you, but put yourself in the place of a neighbor I talked with yesterday.

Here he is, right after he'd pounded in some signs provided by the "Fix It or Nix It" man. My wife and I met Mr. Fix It or Nix It after last Tuesday's Land Use Fairness Committee hearing ended. He'd heard us testify at previous hearings and wondered if we'd like to put up some of his signs.

Sure we would. So we pulled our hybrid Toyota Highlander up next to his so-cool (and rarely seen) classic Volkswagen "pickup," and threw in 20 signs.

Yesterday I used some of them for a photo-op in front of the fence that divides a proposed 137 acre Measure 37 subdivision from south Salem's Liberty Road. For the seventeen years we've lived here, nearly every day I've looked at the rolling vineyard-friendly hills that the claimant wants to put 43 homes on.

Our neighbor has been looking at them for quite a bit longer, since 1976. That's just five years after Leroy Laack, the Measure 37 claimant, bought the property. They each have a history with it. Except the neighbor has been living across the street from the 217 acres (only a portion of which is being subdivided, so far).

Laack is an absentee owner. Neither he nor any of his co-owners have any intention of living on the land. They just want to make money from it.

If neighboring wells go dry—and there already has been a lot of that happening in this groundwater limited area—the Measure 37 claimants won't be around to deal with the consequences. They'll have pocketed their profits and run, leaving the buyers of the lots facing angry residents who don't appreciate what the newcomers have done to the aquifer that everyone depends on.

Do you see why we're against Measure 37 as it stands?

Many people in our area voted for it, but now they want it fixed. They, like me, are sympathetic to people who bought property to build a house on, where they planned to live, then were prevented from doing so by a newly minted land use law.

But that's a far cry from a 43 lot subdivision on farmland that's designated "groundwater limited." Many neighbors have well problems. The man in the photo has to use a drip system on his garden because his well puts out so little water. He figures that he's got some rights too, having lived there for 31 years.

This has been his view. Which, if the Measure 37 claimant has his way, would be filled with 43 homes, and 43 wells, sucking up the water that he and other neighbors depend on.

I don't have a lot of sympathy for people who bought Oregon property for investment purposes, then saw their development options reduced by a land use regulation.

Check out my "Measure 37 shouldn't be a guarantee to get rich." I bet you'll agree with what I say.

Even one of Laack's co-owners agreed with my thesis when I shared it with him before one of the Land Use Fairness Committee hearings. Investing is risky business. There are no guarantees. If you want a no-risk investment, keep your money in a bank account.

Well, thanks for listening, any Measure 37 claimants who have found your way to this Fix Measure 37-leaning blog. I appreciate your being open to another view.

That's what we need more of in Oregon: openness and respect for differing perspectives. Common ground can be found when both sides are willing to give a little.

I'm encouraged by the reform package the Land Use Fairness Committee has put together. I wish it was tougher on Measure 37; others wish it was easier, or left the law alone. So probably it's close to being just right, using the "if both sides are unhappy, it's a good compromise" standard.

Peter Bray over at Land Use Watch has been doing a great job reporting on, and analyzing, the just-released and still-being-amended legislation.

Thanks, Peter. And thanks to the Land Use Fairness Committee for coming up with a Measure 37 fix that makes pretty good sense. Especially to neighbors who are worried about their wells going dry.

Measure 37 die-hards lack sense of irony

Yesterday Laurel and I sat through the entire three hour Land Use Fairness Committee hearing at the capitol. Though we got there 70 minutes early, and dutifully wound our way through the airport-screening-like line to sign up to testify, about seventy people got there before us.

Only the first 50 or so were granted entry to Hearing Room B, where the committee held forth. We found our way to one of the auxiliary rooms, where a large screen projected the proceedings in sort of a Big Brotherish fashion.

No doubt most of the Measure 37 faithful, distinguished by "I (heart) Measure 37" stickers, thought that co-chair Sen. Prozanski indeed was a malevolent agent of the Liberal Conspiracy to Destroy Citizen's Property Rights.

There was much speechifying from the true believers, a vanishing breed according to a recent poll of Oregonians, about the supposed All-American right to do whatever you want with your land, no matter how it affects your neighbors. There even was talk of the Measure 37 reform legislation being equivalent to the communist takeover of private property in East Germany.

Ironies, and a lack of ability to recognize them, abounded among the "I (heart)" crowd. Sen. Prozanski tried to get the public testimony underway quickly, so more people would have a chance to testify, but Republican members of the committee demanded to make some obviously scripted remarks.

"The Senate Republicans on the committee haven't been heard." "We were shut out of the negotiations that produced the reform framework." "The process hasn't been inclusive of all sides."

Unbelievable. These sentiments came from members of a party that unapologetically ignored Democratic legislators during the years they were in power. Last session, House Speaker Karen Minnis and her cronies refused to even bring up bills for a vote that had passed the Senate with bipartisan support.

And now Republicans are complaining about being left out of the process? Ridiculous. They should be thankful they're at the Measure 37 reform table at all. Sen. Prozanski and other Democrats on the committee have been more than fair in giving Republicans air time in both open committee hearings and the closed-door work group sessions.

Another irony was how the citizens who testified that Measure 37 should be left alone were adamant that the committee should respect the "will of the people" who voted for the initiative.

For one thing, I'm sure that most of these folks have no problem with the proposal to allow private hunters to use dogs to kill cougars under the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife "cougar management" (a.k.a., needless killing) plan. This clearly subverts the will of the voters who banned the use of dogs in cougar hunting.

Just as efforts to undermine Oregon's death with dignity laws undermine the majority of voters who wanted to allow someone to take his or her own life with death is near and all hope is gone. So the degree to which someone is offended by meddling with the will of the people obviously depends on whether that will is viewed favorably or unfavorably.

Also, the Measure 37 supporters said over and over that private property rights trump the rights of neighbors. They see people as isolated islands of free agency, able to do whatever they want without needing to consider how that affects the surrounding area. If I drill fifty wells for my subdivision and your well goes dry, tough.

Yet at even a hint that the Democratic majority on the committee might exercise their own right to do what they think is best, outrage! How could the committee members dare to construct their vision of a fair and balanced land use system on the foundation of a reformed Measure 37??!!

Horror of horrors—that'd be acting independently. Which is just what the Measure 37 claimants want to do on their own property. But in the strange world of "I (heart) Measure 37" (as in Animal Farm), all are equal, but some are more equal than others.

Measure 37 introduced a huge element of unfairness into Oregon's land use system. Some people get to roll back the clock on regulations they don't like, while their neighbors don't.

Yet when the public tries to get the train wreck of Measure 37 back on track, as happened last night (I counted 28 people in favor of fixing the measure, and 22 in favor of letting it be), the favored claimant class cries, "You can't roll back the clock on Measure 37! Only we get to roll back the clock!"

Wrong. U-turns can be made by anybody. And they should, as I argued recently on my other blog (see "U-turns often lead to a better direction." Oregonians in Action flim-flammed voters into turning Oregon's pioneering land use laws into a laughing stock. Measure 37 now is used as a model of what not to do by other states.

So it's time to change course again. Which the Land Use Fairness Committee is poised to do, thank god. We and our neighbors have spent $20,000 fighting a 137 acre Measure 37 subdivision that the claimant wants to put on groundwater limited farmland.

The proposed legislation would limit this development to three homes. That's three too many, from the point of view of our hydrogeologist, but a heck of a lot better than the 43 the Measure 37 claimant wants. We submitted written testimony last night to this effect: Download testimony_to_legislature.doc

Check out Land Use Watch and Ridenbaugh Press for some other views of the hearing yesterday. Peter Bray has some interesting photos on his Land Use Watch blog.

Here's my favorite photographic memory of the lengthy proceedings. A Nature Conservancy speaker, whose name I didn't get, brought a stuffed animal to testify with him. I recall it uttered an eloquent birdsong.

I'm no ornithologist, but I'm pretty sure the bird was saying, "Fix Measure 37, Fix Measure 37. I love trees and earthworms, not concrete and asphalt."

Oregonians in Action wants to hijack “Fix Measure 37” rally

Geez, Oregonians in Action, can't you organize your own pro Measure 37 "Pave over Oregon!" rally?

Not only do you want to trample on the rights of citizens to enjoy a sprawl-free, water-plentiful, farm-friendly state, you also want to disrupt the Rally for Oregon that's been organized by Jim Gilbert and his Fix Measure 37 crew.

It'll be held on the steps of the capitol in Salem next Saturday, April 14, from 10-2. Here's a rally flyer: Download measure_37_rally_poster.pdf

Oregonians in Action, which brought us the disaster of Measure 37, is calling on their supporters to hijack the rally.

We are hoping to surround this rally with pro-measure 37 supporters and hold our own rally! We're asking supporters to bring signs that read 'Hands off my property", "Voters Have Spoken", "Tom McCall stole my Pension"; "I Love Measure 37" along with any others you can think of that will help show these people what you really think.

Trying to take over someone else's rally is tacky. But then, so is the asphalted, concreted, subdivided vision of Oregon that Oregonians in Action dreams about.

Notwithstanding our fervent distaste for Measure 37 and the trashing of our state's pioneering land use policies, we get frequent phone calls from Oregonians in Action volunteers. They have us confused with a Larry Hines.

I usually say "wrong number" and hang up when I hear "I'm calling from Oregonians in Action. Is this Larry Hines?" But Laurel stayed on the phone recently.

She got a pitch to attend the Fix Measure 37 rally and help outnumber those who want much-needed changes made to the law. At the end of the conversation, though, Laurel couldn't resist making her true feelings known. I suspect that will be the last phone call we get from Oregonians in Action.

Come to the rally on Saturday. According to a newspaper report, speakers will include:

--Rep. Greg Macpherson of the joint Land Use Fairness Committee
--Mike Carrier, the governor's natural resource policy director
--Rep. Brian Clem, another member of the joint committee
--Bob Stacey, executive director of 1,000 Friends of Oregon
--several farmers

I'm looking forward to mingling with Measure 37 supporters. Oregonians in Action wants to make this rally a smack down. We progressive Greenies are much more into hugging trees. And our fellow citizens.

Update: Laurel just got back from a Land Use Fairness Committee work session. She's encouraged by what she heard. It sounds like the Measure 37 reform framework is still in play, pretty much as it was revealed several weeks ago.

There's been rumors that the framework was dead, but apparently the Democrats have enough cojones to move ahead with changes that Oregonians in Action won't like. Excellent news, if it comes to pass.

It seems that subdivisions in groundwater limited areas, like the one we and our neighbors have been fighting, would be limited to three homes. More good news. We've been worried both that more homes would be allowed, and that an "opt out of transferability" clause would allow a well-heeled developer to build homes with his own money, then sell them to buyers.

The buyers wouldn't get development rights, but the lots already would have been developed. However, in talking with people at the hearing Laurel learned that a bank wouldn't give a mortgage for a home on a "nonconforming" lot. So the Measure 37 claimant would have to be his own developer, and also his own financier for buyers (offering contracts, for example).

That's an awful lot of risk to take on. So at the moment we're feeling good about Measure 37 reform efforts. There's a long road left ahead, though, so the Fix Measure 37 rally is as important as ever.

Measure 37 reform proposal is looking shaky

It appears the "Framework for a Better Measure 37" prepared by a sub-group of the Oregon legislature's Land Use Fairness Committee is starting to fall apart.

Over at Land Use Watch, Peter Bray says he's gotten confidential information that the framework is dead. Peter hates the reform proposal, so his reaction is "Thank God!"

The Oregonian, though, is reporting that the committee members are clashing over details. A meeting was disbanded yesterday over what Sen. Floyd Prozankski called an "impasse."

Well, death also is an impasse, so Bray might have it right after all.

(As an aside, Laura Oppenheimer's Oregonian report is called "Legislators tangle - not tango - over Measure 37." For the moment I will hold off on a plagiarism suit against the newspaper, even though over a year ago I posted a "We tango, and also get tangled" blog post.)

Holding ground with our Measure 37 land use activism

We didn't know what to expect when we walked into today's hearing before the Marion County Commissioners. On behalf of our neighborhood's Keep Our Water Safe Committee, we'd appealed a Planning Commission decision that granted Leroy Laack 27 lots for his proposed 137 acre Measure 37 subdivision near us.

Laack also had appealed, since he wants 43 lots. So there we were at 9:30 in the morning, standing around in the hearing room lobby, waiting for a seemingly endless series of Measure 37 claims to be decided by the County Commissioners, not knowing whether we'd end the day as losers or winners.

By 4:15 in the afternoon, we still didn't know. Our case didn't come up on the agenda until about 11:00. With just a brief snack break and a slightly longer lunch break, testimony from both sides ran hot and heavy for about five hours. We heard that this was the longest meeting of the Marion County Commissioners ever.

We all should have gotten a medal, or something. It was grueling.

I'd had the foresight to bring along a bottle of water, two granola bars, and a bag of Kettle Chips' sort-of-pretzel sort-of-chip thingies. Wise decision. Being one set of appellants, Laurel and I couldn't take the chance that we'd miss something important if we went to get a decent meal.

Which doesn't exactly describe the large cookie and cup of coffee our consulting hydrogeologist, Walt Burt of GSI Water Solutions, brought back for what loosely could be called "lunch." Nonetheless, Walt had enough sustenance in him to do a good job with his critique of a report prepared by Laack's hired geologist gun, Malia Kupillas.

In her testimony Laurel made mention of the "dueling hydrologists" syndrome. That's when two water experts lock horns and come to diametrically opposed conclusions about the same geologic situation. The one with the thickest stack of paper in his or her report often is considered to be the winner by naïve observers.

Naïve, because often "we don't know" is the wisest, truest, and most scientific statement that can be made. The basic stance of the Keep Our Water Safe Committee is that not enough is known about how much water is available to support the proposed subdivision, nor whether adding 27 (or 43) more homes to a groundwater limited area is going to further stress existing wells and the creek that feeds our neighborhood lake.

I was all set to start out my testimony with a Greek philosophy quote. I'd copied a page from Plato's Apology, carefully highlighted it, and was ready to speak about how Socrates compared himself with a know-it-all who really wasn't. Socrates said that the other guy thought that he knew what he was talking about, but didn't, while Socrates knew that he didn't know—so that gave him the advantage.

However, just before Laurel and I went up to testify, our attorney told us to keep our remarks as brief as possible, because the hearing had gone on so long. Hey, I thought, you told a "Rocky and Bullwinkle" story in your own legal testimony. Isn't Socrates as deserving to be heard as two cartoon characters?

But I dutifully cut out as much fluff as possible when my turn to speak came. I'd labored for a couple of days on preparing three critiques of Kupillas' report. They were darn well done, I have to say, works of land use activism art. A lot like class assignments, except I didn't get any credits for them. Or a lot like a company project, except I didn't get any money for them.

That's the thing about hearings like today's. You look around the room and realize that almost everybody is either being paid to be there—the commissioners, consultants, county staff—or hopes to make a buck from the project (the owners of the proposed subdivision property).

We and our neighbors were the only ones without an obvious monetary fish to fry. Sure, the value of our homes would drop, a lot, if wells go dry. But that's secondary to our desire to protect the livability of our neighborhood. We want to learn what's really going on with the declining aquifers in our neck of the south Salem hills woods.

Truth: that's what we're asking for. Socrates would love us. And Walt too. He's a paid consultant, but has a scientist's appreciation for digging out the facts (a fitting trait for a geologist). Walt just sent me these thoughts about the proper practice of his profession:

Hydrogeology is an inexact science, and thus hydrogeologists often have to develop conclusions and make significant decisions based on information involving varying degrees of uncertainty.

It is incumbent on us to understand the uncertainties, and based on the types of decisions and potential ramifications, to determine whether additional information is warranted to be able to make a decision with more confidence in a positive outcome.

If we push decisions that the information about key aspects of the hydrogeologic system cannot support, we run the very real risk of an unintended consequence that can have long-term impacts. Also, because we are dealing with a geologic system, the real extent of the impacts can take years to develop.

We're asking that Marion County require that the developers conduct extensive tests of area groundwater before the subdivision is approved. Not just a review of existing data, but drilling test wells and monitoring their effect on surrounding wells and surface water.

We made a strong case. And held our ground. No decision was reached. The County Commissioners gave us two weeks to respond to the information presented by Laack's consultants. Then they get a week to respond to our response. No winner or loser yet.

Except for the coffee house next door to the hearing room. They made out just fine with the seven hour meeting. After quite a few years, we've learned the first rule of land use activism: empty your bladder and fill your stomach before setting out for the appeal wars.

Draft of Measure 37 fix emerges

The AP is reporting the outline of a Measure 37 reform proposal, based on a confidential draft produced by the Oregon legislature's Land Use Fairness Committee (which obviously isn't confidential anymore).

Measure 37 claimants who want to build up to three homes would qualify for "fast track" status. Others who consider that they lost more than three home sites due to land use regulations could build up to ten homes. Supposedly, though, there would be protections for valuable farmland.

Transferability of Measure 37 waivers would be allowed—currently a legal gray area. A remaining sticky point is how to value Measure 37 claims, in case government wanted to compensate a property owner for lost value rather than waiving land use regulations.

On the whole, it looks like a halfway decent compromise between those who want to keep Measure 37 as it is (ideally, with transferability added in), and those like my wife and me who'd like to see the whole misguided law disappear.

Ten homes, though, is on the upper end of what reform legislation should allow. That's a small subdivision. However, we're fighting a proposed 43-home Measure 37 subdivision near us, trimmed down to 27 by a Marion County Planning Commission decision.

So ten homes is an improvement over 43, or 27. But three to five would be even better.

It'll be interesting to see what finally emerges from the Land Use Fairness Committee. It's good to see some progress after all the heated committee hearings, some of which Laurel and I testified at.

Getting down and dirty with Measure 37 fix

It looks like the Oregon legislature's Land Use Fairness Committee is close to revealing it's fix for Measure 37. So reported a story in the McMinnville News-Register last Thursday, "Measure 37 panel nears 'Camp David' compromise."

That's great. I just hope the proposal does a better job at reconciling opposing views than the Camp David accord ended up doing.

Like they say, once you get general agreement on how to resolve a problem, the devil is in the details. The folks at Loaded Orygun surmise that the consensus will be to limit Measure 37 subdivisions to a fairly small number of houses, like three to five. Torrid says:

The people who didn't show up to plead their woeful case in hearings were the developers and the people with major subdivisions (well, a couple subdivision people did, but they sure didn't sound as sympathetic as the doddering people with 80 acres of scrub "farmland.") It's those people who could wreck the system and forever alter the landscape, and it's those people who (I hope) are sacrificed in the agreement.

Me too. We live close to a proposed 217 acre Measure 37 subdivision. A Washington Post reporter cited our neighborhood's battle against this threat to our groundwater (our area is officially designated "groundwater limited") in a recent story.

He said that Measure 37 has come to be known as the "Hate Your Neighbor Act." That's partly true. But it's more accurate to say that what the people already living next to the subdivision hate isn't Leroy Laack and his partners, but what they're poised to do to irreplaceable farmland.

Recently roads were roughed out on the property. For sixteen years we've driven by the rolling hills that would make a beautiful vineyard or Christmas tree farm. Now there are scars across the hillside.

And chewed-up mud near where a well apparently is being drilled.

To supporters of Measure 37, these are signs of progress. To us and our neighbors, they're indications that the legislature needs to get as down and dirty with its Measure 37 fix as the developers are with the farmland that's poised to become a subdivision.

It wouldn't be right to allow a few subdivisions to be built just because they happened to be the first bad examples of Measure 37's overreaching. Any fix needs to roll the clock back on subdivisions that didn't have a building permit on January 1, 2007, just as Gov. Kulongoski proposed in SB 505.

Measure 37 rolled back the clock on Oregon's land use laws. It's only fair that a Measure 37 fix also roll back the clock, this time on subdivisions that made it through the development approval system just before reform legislation was passed.

The Keep Our Water Safe Committee formed by our neighborhood has already spent $20,000 on fighting a Measure 37 subdivision. There's an evident consensus that large developments like this now should be limited.

Much as Dorothy English was a "poster child" for the problem Measure 37 was intended to correct, our fight has become a well-publicized example of why Measure 37 needs to be fixed.

Dorothy English has gotten what she wanted. Our neighborhood should also. Reform legislation needs to stop the Laack subdivision in its increasingly muddy tracks.

Oregon groundwater threatened by Measure 37

This Oregonian used to take water for granted. That was when I lived within the city limits of Portland and Salem. I turned on the tap and water came out. Where it came from, who cares?

Now my wife and I live in the country. Our water comes from a well. We've learned a lot about groundwater. We realize that wells can go dry when more water is taken out of an aquifer than is going in.

That's why we're leading a fight to stop a Measure 37 subdivision near our home. Yesterday the Salem Statesman Journal ran a front-page story about the battle, which has cost our neighborhood group (Keep Our Water Safe committee) almost $20,000 so far.

"It seems to me the cost should be on the developers," neighbor Laurel Hines said. "They should have to explore the resources before they allow the new use."

Absolutely. Leroy Laack hopes to make millions by turning productive farmland into a subdivision. The hundreds of people already living here just want to keep wells and the creek that feeds Spring Lake from going dry. This is the craziness of Measure 37. It trashes the rights of the many in favor of the few.

Fortunately, Oregonians are waking up to the nightmare of Measure 37. There's a growing recognition that this ill-considered "property rights" legislation (which ignores the fact that people already living in an area also have rights) poses a serious threat to the state's groundwater.

Over on Blue Oregon, Russell Sadler describes "Oregon's approaching water crisis." He's mostly right on, though it isn't true that the groundwater in rural areas is replenished by streams and rivers. Rainfall generally does the trick.

In central Oregon, however, there's a closer connection between surface water and groundwater due to the area's unique geology (lava and other rocky deposits have cracks that allow water to flow more freely). Some of the comments to Sadler's post address this.

Other comments reflect the ignorance of those who believe that (1) Oregon has plenty of water because it rains so much here, and/or (2) there's a easy way around the state's looming water shortage. One particularly ridiculous comment calls for desalinization plants. And apparently a really long pipe to Eastern Oregon.

Legislation has been introduced that would require rural homeowners to get a permit before drilling a well. Currently wells used for domestic purposes are exempt from the requirements that govern farmers and commercial users. Yet Measure 37 is about to bring us thousands of new wells on land where water is already scarce.

Beth Casper describes the problem in a recent Statesman Journal story (an earlier story in the paper points out how Measure 37 is exacerbating rural groundwater problems).

Away from city limits, farmers and residents tap into groundwater to get water to faucets in homes and sprinklers in agricultural fields. Although farmers have to go through the state Water Resources Department for approval to pump groundwater, residents don't.

That concerns farmers and environmentalists, who say that domestic water users should follow the same rules. They say it's unclear how much groundwater is available and what kind of impact domestic uses have on groundwater.

A few months ago Laurel and I went to a presentation by the executive director of WaterWatch of Oregon, John deVoe. He said that water rights in this state still are based on a Wild West philosophy of "whoever gets there first," a lot like how land originally was grabbed by settlers.

Problem is, deVoe noted, this is an inefficient and unfair way of managing a scarce resource like water. Just because someone has an old water right doesn't mean they should be able to use water wastefully, while other more productive users are shut out.

Exempting rural residential wells from permitting makes matters worse. First come, first served is bad enough as a water rights principle.

Now, Measure 37 subdivisions are able to use the "anytime come, first served" domestic well exemption as a license to suck dry existing wells owned by neighboring farmers and residents.

Measure 37 and Oregon's groundwater laws both need reforming. Legislature, get off your duff.

Washington Post story shows flaws of Measure 37 (and we’re mentioned)

I've been checking the online Washington Post daily ever since a reporter interviewed us about Measure 37. Today Blaine Harden's article, "Oregon Rethinks Easing Land-Use Limits," appeared.

It points out how far this state has fallen. From being a leader in wise land use planning, Oregon now is used as an example of what not to do.

Cities in Oregon have suburbs that come to a sudden and seemingly arbitrary stop. They slammed into an "urban growth boundary," which for decades prevented townhouses and strip malls from invading the state's farmland and forests.

It was the nation's strictest statewide regime for strangling sprawl -- and a famous example of Oregon's populist pride in creating laws that cut against the grain. This, after all, is a state where you can lawfully kill yourself with a physician's assistance, but you cannot lawfully pump your own gas without the assistance of some guy at a filling station.

A voter initiative in 2004, however, undermined the state's land-use law. With the overwhelming approval of Measure 37, which has been upheld in the courts and is shredding the anti-sprawl status quo, Oregonians unwittingly replaced land-use quirkiness with land-use chaos.

Many here are now suffering from voter's remorse and want the law fixed, according to opinion polls, newspaper pundits and a number of powerful state politicians.

Gov. Kulongoski is quoted, as is David Hunnicutt, president of Oregonians in Action. But naturally our focus was on the mention of us, at the end of the story.

It is the middling land deals under Measure 37 that seem to generate the greatest amount of raw emotion. It happens when a property owner infuriates neighbors by trying to turn a once-protected patch of farmland or forest into a subdivision. In many parts of Oregon, Measure 37 has come to be known as the "Hate Your Neighbor Act."

Brian and Laurel Hines live south of Salem in a housing cluster with limited groundwater. Even under the best conditions, they say, home wells in the neighborhood are at risk of running low. Their neighbor, a farmer with 217 acres, recently proposed building more than 40 houses, each with its own well, on nearby land in the same watershed. The increased demand could tap out the groundwater.

The Hineses and their neighbors have pressured county officials to scale down the proposed subdivision to fewer than 30 houses. But they say it has cost them $20,000 in fees for lawyers and water experts -- and months of work, worry and short nights.

"It is neighbor against neighbor out here," Brian Hines said. "I'd like to think it isn't personal, but it is."

Oregon legislature finds common ground on Measure 37

Something remarkable happened in Hearing Room B of the Capitol tonight. Twenty eight supporters and opponents of Measure 37, including Laurel and me, testified on legislation proposed by the Land Use Fairness Committee.

Every single person disliked Senate Bill 833. At one point a committee member observed, "Finally, we've brought everyone in the room together on Measure 37."

As the Oregonian reported, SB 883 would give state and county agencies 540 days to process Measure 37 claims filed between October 15 and December 5 of last year, rather than the current 180 days. SB 833 also would fast-track claims for a single-family house.

The committee seems to have shelved SB 505. This is Gov. Kulongoski's proposal to put a temporary freeze on all claims, with the exception of requests to build a single-family home. SB 883 is a wishy-washy alternative that pleases no one.

Laurel and I ended up in the same three-person testimony block. A trio is called up to sit at the testifying table, where you each get two minutes to say your piece. This is excellent practice for pithy speechifying. Time flies when you've got a lot to rant about, and just 120 seconds to get your points across.

While the pro-Measure 37 guy who sat between us argued against any delay in processing claims, I feverishly ran possible jokes through my mind.

A legislator had just made his "we've brought everybody together" comment. I was wearing an anti-SB 883 sticker that I'd picked up in the lobby, undoubtedly produced by Oregonians in Action—my arch enemy on land use issues. It seemed like a great chance to lighten up the Hearing Room B atmosphere with a witty observation.

But the committee chair, Sen. Prozanski, was ruthlessly holding people to the two minutes. Every witticism that popped into my head would take at least 20 seconds for a set-up, punch line, and appreciative laughter. I was unwilling to spend 1/6 of my precious testifying time on a joke.

So I basically read my written testimony with as much pizzazz as I could muster. Which you can read here: Download sb_833_testimony.doc

To their credit, the members of the Land Use Fairness Committee do an admirable job of looking like they're interested in what members of the public have to say. Laurel gave them kudos in her remarks for being able to listen to so much Measure 37 testimony over the past few weeks, much of it emotional.

Of the twenty-eight people who testified against SB 883, fourteen had reasons related to being against Measure 37, and fourteen had reasons related to being in favor of the law.

Dan Goffin, a farmer and member of the Marion County Planning Commission, said that "agriculture has been gut-shocked" by Measure 37. He mocked the notion that governmental land use laws have markedly reduced property values, noting that his land once was worth $15,000 and now is over $1,000,000. "That's a pretty good return," he said.

The most nonsensical pro-Measure 37 statement came from a woman who intoned, "God gave me the right to control my land when He created the earth." I dearly wanted to know more about the theology behind that statement, but questions weren't being asked by the legislators and I never got a chance to talk to the woman.

Before the hearing started I got to meet another of the owners who are trying to develop a 217 acre Measure 37 subdivision adjacent to our Spring Lake Estates neighborhood. He came up and introduced himself. I shook his hand and said, "Nice to meet you. I'm part of the group fighting your proposed development."

"Oh, so I guess you want to make this country into Venezuela and socialize all of our private property," he said to me.

That didn't seem like a promising beginning to a dialogue about Measure 37 and land use planning, but actually we ended up having a pretty good discussion. He agreed with what's becoming my favorite anti-Measure 37 argument: it shouldn't be a guarantee to get rich.

Other than that, we mostly argued with each other. Except when it came to Senate Bill 833. We both were wearing "Stop SB 833" stickers.

Thank you, Land Use Fairness Committee, for enabling Oregonians to find common ground on at least one Measure 37 issue: SB 833 deserves to be dumped.

[Next day update: The Salem Statesman Journal includes quotes from me and Laurel in its front page story about last night's hearing. And an AP story quoteth me even more.

Thank you, AP. I labored for more than a minute on getting the Band-Aid analogy just right in my testimony. It's good to know that effort of that magnitude pays off in press coverage.]

Is freeze on Measure 37 claims dead?

Gov. Kulongoski reportedly has pronounced SB 505 dead. Which means, subdivisions would be free to sprout on irreplaceable Oregon farmland while the legislature takes its time considering Measure 37 reforms.

That'd be a disaster. I hope today's Statesman Journal story is a premature burial of SB 505. If I learn more about the fate of the bill, I'll post an update. If anyone can cast more light on the prospects for SB 505, comment away.

Here's the brief piece by reporter Steve Law:

In comments to reporters on Thursday, Gov. Ted Kulongoski said that his proposal to put a freeze on many Measure 37 claims -- contained in Senate Bill 505 -- appeared to be off the table.

"I thought that was an easy push, and I was mistaken," he said.

Instead, a joint legislative committee on land use likely will consider bills that combine "substantive" changes to Measure 37 with proposals to streamline smaller claims and extend the deadline for processing claims, Kulongoski said.

Addressing Measure 37 likely will take all session, he said, making it one of the thorniest issues before lawmakers this year.

Speaking as someone who lives near a proposed 217 acre Measure 37 subdivision, the governor's comment about his mistaken notion that SB 505 would be an easy push is disturbing.

A neighborhood group that my wife chairs has spent $15,000 and many hours fighting the Measure 37 claim that threatens our groundwater. That hasn't been easy. We've been looking for some support from the governor and legislature.

It'd be unfair and unwise to allow Measure 37 subdivisions to go forward while the legislature ponders changes that would prevent such large-scale developments on farmland in the future. Hopefully the governor and Land Use Fairness Committee realize that.

This isn't the time to back off on SB 505 just because progress on passing the bill hasn't been easy. Kulongoski has a reputation for being wishy-washy. Just yesterday I was telling someone, "I think he's changed."

Prove me right. Let's see some backbone, governor.

[Update: Loaded Orygun got a response from Rep. Greg Macpherson, co-chair of the Land Use Fairness Committee. At first reading I thought this was good news about SB 505, but on closer inspection I agree with Loaded Orygun: it sounds like SB 505 is being shelved in favor of tackling Measure 37 directly.

Problem is, while the legislature fiddles around, Oregon's rural landscape is beginning to burn with subdivisions. A temporary hold on most Measure 37 claims is needed, while allowing claimants to build a single home on their property.

As noted in "Ted Spills, Mac Confirms: M37 'Time-out' Bill on Life Support," the Land Use Fairness Committee is going to end up with a complicated mess when it tries to distinguish between claims in various stages: applied for but not approved, approved but not under development, under development but not with a building permit.

It'd make a lot more sense to freeze the larger claims until the legislature figures out what to do with the disaster that this law has become.]

Oregonians in Action spreads lies about Measure 37

An acquaintance of ours just got a phone call from someone who tried to get her hysterical about SB 505, the reasonable bill that would temporarily put Measure 37 subdivisions on hold while fast-tracking claims for single-family homes.

She was told that SB 505 is going to stop all development under Measure 37, forever! You can bet that Oregonians in Action (OIA) is behind these lies, because the Land Use Watch blog has called them on their falsities. Which are still being spread.

The SB 505 summary tells the bill like it is:

Except for written demands for compensation for land use regulations seeking to build one single-family dwelling or divide land for purpose of building one single-family dwelling, temporarily stops time periods relating to written demands for compensation until June 30, 2007, or adjournment sine die, whichever occurs first. Preserves rights of claimants who die during time period temporarily stopped.

A Measure 37 claimant can still have a single-family dwelling on his or her previously homeless property, so all development isn't being stopped. And see that word, "temporarily"? Oregonians in Action should consult a dictionary. It doesn't mean "forever."

Given the deceptive way Measure 37 was sold to Oregonians, glossing over the many subdivisions that would be sprouting on farmland, it isn't surprising that OIA president Dave Hunnicutt is still pumping out untruths.

His letter to Measure 37 claimants says, "Right now, the Oregon legislature is considering Senate Bill 505, a proposal by Measure 37 opponents that would suspend all Measure 37 claims, including those that have been filed and those that have been approved."

Not true, as I just noted. You can find SB 505 right on the OIA website. Hunnicutt either didn't read it closely or, more likely, consciously chose to inflame his troops with a false description of the bill.

This week my wife testified in favor of SB 505 at a Land Use Fairness Committee hearing. She said that legislators had to tell the rabid anti-SB 505'ers that the bill doesn't do what they were complaining about: suspend Measure 37 indefinitely and stop all development by claimants.

More than likely, a lot of people at the hearing got all their information about SB 505 from Hunnicutt's misleading letter.

Well, what would you expect from an organization that pays lip service to land use fairness, yet is responsible for bringing Oregon a law that has brought massive unfairness? Watch the video, "And fairness for none: The impact of Measure 37 on Oregonians and Oregon's landscape."

The truth is there, and here. If you want lies about Measure 37, you'll have to talk to Oregonians in Action.

Measure 37 shouldn’t be a guarantee to get rich

It’s often said that Measure 37 pits neighbor against neighbor. True. But this ill-considered effort to trash Oregon’s land use laws also pits testifier against testifier.

I learned that yesterday afternoon as I fought my way through a crowd of people trying to sign up to speak before the Joint Committee on Land Use Fairness. Fortunately, I found myself standing behind a diminutive friend, Frances Chapple, who makes up in assertiveness what she lacks in stature.

She helped clear the way for me to the sign up sheet. I got on the first page and waited for my two minutes before the committee, which was gathering background information on Measure 37 before drafting proposed changes to the law.

The members got an earful. And not for the first or last time. My wife had testified at a similar hearing last Thursday. Yesterday not everyone got to have their say in the two hours allotted for testimony, so they’ll be carried over to another hearing tomorrow.

It’s an emotional issue. People on both sides of the Measure 37 debate spoke passionately. Being all too familiar with the problems Measure 37 has brought to Oregon, not surprisingly I felt that the opponents had by far the better arguments. Such as, mine.

I made so much sense in my 120 seconds or so, I expected the committee to stand as one and applaud. The packed audience too. But as so often happens, my brilliance went unrecognized—apart from Corbett’s John Christensen, a kindred anti-Measure 37 soul who told me after the hearing that he liked what I said, and a neighbor who phoned today and left some praise on our voice mail.

Soon I’m going to write up a recollection of my largely extemporaneous remarks and submit them as written testimony. The committee members should be able to hold the truth that I spoke about Measure 37 in their hands. And this is: there’s a big difference between wanting to live on land and wanting to make money from land.

[Update on 2/9: I've written up a version of my testimony before the Land Use Fairness Committee. Gave it to committee staff yesterday. Sure makes a lot of sense to me. But then, I'm me. It's short. Take a read:]
Download measure_37_testimony.doc

This difference is reflected in the governor’s recently announced proposal, SB 505. This would speed up Measure 37 claims that seek to build only one house, while putting on hold other development claims—such as the 217 acre proposed subdivision on farm land in our neighborhood.

Lots of people spoke in favor of SB 505 at the hearing yesterday, even though the Land Use Fairness Committee wasn’t formally taking testimony on the bill. Philosophically it’s in tune with what I told the committee: there’s no reason why people who buy property for investment purposes should be protected from government actions that reduce the value of what they own.

As I’ve blogged before, government bodies do things all the time that change the value of investments. Stocks, bonds, commodities, precious metals, the list goes on and on. So why should those who invest in real estate be treated differently from other sorts of investors?

I told the committee that I owned some limited partnerships prior to passage of the Tax Reform Act of 1986. A financial planner had urged me to buy them for their tax benefits. Those benefits largely disappeared after 1986.

Did I cry, “Unfair! This is a government taking! Rules were changed in the middle of my investment game. Either I should be compensated for the money that I’ve lost, or the Tax Reform Act should be waived for me because I bought my limited partnerships when other tax laws were in effect.”

No, I didn’t. I never ever thought of this. I realized that investing is risky. Situations change. As they do, the value of an investment rises and falls. If you want a sure return on your money, keep it in a bank account.

Yesterday I heard talk about Measure 37 restoring “constitutional rights.” Huh? The Constitution doesn’t guarantee that you’ll make money on a real estate investment. It doesn’t guarantee that laws won’t change during the time you own a piece of property. Yet Measure 37 is predicated on the assumption that if the value of property has been reduced by government action, you’re entitled to be compensated.

That’s ridiculous. Most people who testified recognized this. They made a distinction between someone whose primary motivation is to live on their land, versus someone whose sole desire is to make money from their land.

A single home on a Measure 37 claim, no problem. A large subdivision on a Measure 37 claim, no way. In between a single home and a subdivision—that’s where the Land Use Fairness Committee will have to strike a balance.

The first hearing on SB 505 is tomorrow at 5:00 pm. Head on down to Hearing Room B at the State Capitol and have your say. I recommend that you get there by 4:30 to sign up early.

If there’s a small retired Willamette University emeritus professor of chemistry in line with you, get behind her. Frances knows how to work a queue.

Lastly, I enjoyed talking with the Measure 37 claimant, Leroy Laack, that the Keep Our Water Safe committee (headed by Laurel) has been battling. We don’t like Laack’s plan to plunk a 217 acre subdivision on farmland adjacent to our neighborhood. But I found Leroy himself to be eminently likable.

We’d shared time on a TV news story before, but had never spoken to each other. After the hearing Leroy approached me and we chatted for about fifteen minutes. Didn’t agree on a whole lot, but that’s okay. I respect his 79 year old tenacity, even though I wish he was determined to leave a beautiful vineyard as a legacy rather than a subdivision.

A committee staffer took a photo of us. I told Leroy that I’d look like him in twenty more years. Actually, I sort of already do.

Measure 37 fight gets us on the 11 o’clock news

Whew. After being relegated five times to the early KATU news programs, our fight against a Measure 37 subdivision finally made the prestigious 11 o’clock program last night.

Thank you, Channel 2. Love you. (Though my “Local Portland news focused on fluff and crime” post still holds, notwithstanding the 1:45 devoted to our serious story).

Here’s the YouTubed news clip of the Marion County Planning Commission decision on the 217 acre subdivision application.

Note my concentrated focus on the camcorder with which I videoed the proceedings. It’s healthy for public officials to know that their deliberations and decisions might appear on the Internet, as is happening with the overly secretive Virginia legislature.

The Statesman-Journal also ran a story on the decision. Which was pretty complicated. We’re still digesting the ramifications of the final Planning Commission motion that was approved 4-3. (Read this previous post to better understand the following).

--five acre minimum lot size is required for the subdivision
--the big 92 acre lot can be reduced to 80 acres, if desired by the developer
--only one house can be built on the 80 (or 92) acre lot
--that leaves up to 137 acres for the subdivision (original 125 acres plus potential 12 acres from the big lot)
--which means a theoretical maximum of 28 homes can be built (137/5 = 27, plus one on the 80 acre lot), though roads and other infrastructure would reduce the available acreage
--any attempt to partition the 28 lots would trigger a hydrogeological study (not review) of the entire property
--a hydrogeological review must be conducted now
--both a conceptual and detailed approval of the application was passed (no additional public hearing required)

Basically, we’re happy. Not ecstatic. Leroy Laack originally wanted to build 80 homes on the property. After his geologist told him there wasn’t enough water, the plan changed to 43 homes. Now it’s down to a maximum of 28.

Better for our neighborhood’s limited groundwater supply. However, the state Water Resources Department says that any further development in the area threatens existing wells. So we wanted the Planning Commission to require a more extensive groundwater study before approving the application.

Measure 37 has created a mess. That was evident last night. The commissioners talked about how this EFU (exclusive farm use) land never was intended to become a subdivision. So when Marion County laid the foundation for its groundwater ordinance, those 217 acres weren’t part of the area that was studied.

People bought property here figuring they could trust in fair and equitable zoning practices. If they built a house adjacent to farmland, they assumed it wouldn’t change into a subdivision without going through an open, deliberate, rational planning process.

Measure 37 took away that assumption. Which is why it needs to be suspended by the legislature and governor until fairness is restored to Oregon’s land use system. We and our neighbors achieved a halfway acceptable outcome yesterday.

But this state can do a lot better than “halfway.” Sign the Fix Measure 37 petition if you haven’t done so already.

How to fix Measure 37

Measure 37 has made a mess of Oregon’s land use laws. That’s undisputed. My state now has a crazily complex patchwork of land use time zones, each governed by a different set of rules based on when the owner acquired the property.

This is no way to run a society. It’s unfair, inefficient, damaging, and divisive. The governor says that we need to fix Measure 37. Legislative leaders say that we need to fix Measure 37.

So let’s get ‘er done. Or git-r-done. I don’t care which, so long as it’s done.

My wife and I are fully acquainted with the problems Measure 37 is creating. Scroll through this blog’s “Measure 37” category (past this post, which will temporarily head the list) and you’ll see that we know whereof we speak.

So here’s my speaking about how to fix Measure 37. The foundation of my fixing is some simple philosophy: land is sacred, but not in the way extreme property rights activists would have us believe.

Land is sacred—using this term in a broad non-religious sense—because humans can’t exist without it. Water is sacred to fish. Air is sacred to clouds. Space is sacred to stars. But sacredness obviously is not limited to land, water, air, and space.

For every entity in the universe, living or non-living, is part of an interconnected web that allows it to exist and do whatever it is capable of doing. A few days ago I went to a Measure 37 workshop at the Salem Public Library where Mitch Rohse, a land use planner, made this same point.

“Land is not a discrete object,” he said. It’s nature is connectedness. Water flows between legal parcels, both above and below the ground. Ditto with air, wildlife, and the photons that allow me to see what is on my neighbor’s lot, and for him to see what is on mine.

In addition, Rohse pointed out, land is not a product of man. It isn’t created. A religious person would say land is the result of God’s grace. A scientific person, that it is the result of natural processes. Whichever, land clearly isn’t an item that anyone can claim proud ownership of: “This is mine. I made it.”

As Rohse said, you can make a cell phone. You can make a jacket. But you can’t make land. So if there is anything on earth that a person doesn’t have a right to use as he or she wants, this would be land. (See my “Property rights and wrongs,” where I ask if it’d be okay to sell the entire planet).

However, most of us intuitively recognize that there is one use for which land is almost always well suited: the owner should be able to live on it (so long as the living can be done safely without seriously inconveniencing neighbors).

This is how Measure 37 was sold to voters by Oregonians in Action. We heard horror stories of how hard-hearted government bureaucrats were preventing people from building a house on long-held land that wasn’t much good for anything else, including farming. And voters bought it.

As they should have.

I believe that Oregon’s land use laws had indeed gotten overly rigid and needed some loosening up. But not a demolishing. The governor says that fewer than a thousand of the almost 6,500 Measure 37 claims filed to date are asking to build a home on land bought for that purpose years ago.

No, most are like the 217 acre claim adjacent to our neighborhood, where Leroy Laack and his iinvestment partners want to put 43 homes on 125 acres that are officially designated “groundwater limited.”

If Mr. Laack wanted to live on his property, we’d welcome him to the south Salem hills. However, since he wants to take the money and run by dividing his land into small parcels, we most certainly do have a problem with his proposal to turn productive farmland into a subdivision.

Let’s agree, then, that almost always people should be allowed to build a single home on their land. Again, this is what most voters thought they were getting with Measure 37. I’ve got no problem with that. Any Measure 37 fix should allow this to happen.

And that’s about all it should allow. For while I’d agree that there is a “sacred” right to live on one’s land, there is no such right to profit commercially from land. As Mitch Rohse said at the workshop I attended, bare land generally rises in value even when no improvements are made to it.

This is because the increased value comes from the community, not an individual. Rohse noted that we all created the increase in the value of land his family owns in eastern Oregon, for we all maintained a successful society. He called this the “great giving”—wealth given by the community to landowners.

In my quasi-grandiose “Could I become the anti-Measure 37 Dorothy English?” I argued that government actions affect the value of all kinds of investments: stocks, bonds, precious metals, commodities, and so forth. Why should commercial property investors expect special treatment through laws like Measure 37?

Governmental bodies are making decisions all the time that increase or decrease the value of assets held by people. If the Federal Reserve raises interest rates, the price of bonds goes down. Bond traders don’t moan and cry, “Government, reimburse me for the money that I’ve lost because of you.”

Similarly, I told Beth [a newspaper reporter] that both Laurel and I owned limited partnerships in the 1980s (we weren’t married to each other then, but had the same financial planner). They were touted as good investments because of the federal tax code in effect at the time.

Well, they weren’t nearly as good an investment after Congress tinkered with the tax code. As I recall, Oregon’s Mark Hatfield (or Bob Packwood?) was one of the prime movers behind the closing of this tax loophole. Overnight, the monetary benefit we were enjoying from the partnerships fell. A lot, I remember.

Investments rise. Investments fall. That’s the nature of investing. Why should property investments be the exception to this rule? The 217-acre Measure 37 claim next to our neighborhood is a proposed 82 lot subdivision, not a single-family home site.

There’s no reason why the owner of this investment property should be given a special dispensation to harm the limited groundwater supply in our area just because zoning laws changed after he bought the land. Tax laws changed after we bought our partnerships. Nobody compensated us for lost value caused by government action. Why should Leroy Laack and his partners get a free pass?

So this is the other way Measure 37 should be fixed: make a distinction between property held for personal use and investment property. Again, people usually should have the right to live on their land. However, they don’t have a right to roll back land use laws just so they can profit from their land.

Government doesn’t roll back laws for people who have lost money because of a change in a tax or fiscal policy. Neither should government waive Oregon’s land use laws just because the value of a property investment supposedly has been reduced a bit. That’s the way investing works: it’s risky business.

Thus the bottom line on fixing Measure 37 is simple: a landowner should almost always be able to build a house on his or her property. Aside from that, he or she has to abide by the current land use laws.

Get 'er done, governor and legislature. Making such a simple fix shouldn’t take long.

Our Measure 37 fight makes TV news and Loaded Orygun

Kudos to KATU Channel 2 for devoting about four and a half minutes to coverage of Measure 37 in general, and our neighborhood’s battle against a M-37 subdivision in particular.

Three versions of the story aired on KATU’s early evening news programs last Monday. I uploaded the clips to YouTube, even the ones that didn’t feature me saying anything (Laurel came up with the most quotable remarks, which is only fair, as I got more air time on the previous Channel 2 coverage).

Here are links to the clips (Story #2 is the longest and most complete):

Story #1, 4:30 pm news, 1:13, 1.4 MB

Story #2, 5:00 pm news, 2:28, 2.8 MB

Story #3, 6:30 pm news, :50, 1.0 MB

Also, over on Loaded Orygun blogger Carla has a post about us being “Screwed sideways by Measure 37.” Carla talked with Laurel by phone recently and got the scoop on how a 217 acre subdivision threatens to dry up both nearby wells and the springs that feed Spring Lake.

The Marion County Planning Commission was supposed to make a decision on the subdivision yesterday, but the evening meeting was called off because of the weather. It’s been rescheduled for January 30.

Hopefully the Commission won’t let Measure 37 screw our neighborhood, where groundwater problems are already evident—and will only be made worse if 44 additional wells are allowed to be dug without requiring the Measure 37 claimant to demonstrate that there is enough water for his subdivision.

Measure 37 subdivision battle hits front page again

If nothing else, we’re sure helping to publicize the danger Measure 37 poses to Oregon’s groundwater.

Today’s Salem Statesman-Journal had another front page story, “Marion county decision may set precedent for farmland,” about the fight Laurel is leading against a 217 acre subdivision planned for nearby farmland. (Plus a related story about a similar situation in the Eola Hills).

When I say “if nothing else,” I’m pointing toward the disturbing possibility that the Marion County Planning Commission might approve the subdivision application tomorrow night without requiring a study of how much groundwater actually is available in the area.

Last Friday we sent a letter to 92 of our neighbors, updating them on what’s going on with the Keep Our Water Safe (KOWS) committee that Laurel chairs. We said:

Even the applicant’s hydrogeologist, Malia Kupillas, has testified that more information is needed about water availability, usage, and problems in this area before the development moves forward. So it seems unthinkable that the Planning Commission would ignore the recommendations of both the applicant, Leroy Laack, and the opposition, which includes the KOWS committee.

(Here’s the entire letter.)
Download kows_update_11107.doc

But the unthinkable can happen if a government body fails to carefully think through a problem. All we and our neighbors are asking is that approval of the 43-lot subdivision (which could be as large as 80 lots) be held up until a hydrogeological study proves that there is adequate water to support 43 more wells.

People already living here shouldn’t have their wells go dry because of poor planning. Nor should the creek that feeds Spring Lake, which has senior rights to the water that flows off of the proposed subdivision. Leroy Laack, the Measure 37 claimant, has waited thirty years to develop his property. It won’t hurt him to wait three more months so a study can be conducted.

Especially when the only evidence of groundwater adequacy the Marion County Planning Commission has so far is based on “fuzzy math.” This well-deserved term was heard frequently during the first hearing on the Laack subdivision. Even from some of the commissioners.

The Salem KATU (Portland Channel 2) news team came out today to interview Laurel and me again. (The story reportedly will run on the 5 o’clock news). Before Melica Johnson and her cameraman arrived, I grabbed a paper plate and made a video-friendly depiction of the fuzzy math.

Unfortunately, it probably wasn’t friendly enough to make it on air, notwithstanding my intense effort to print as legibly as possible. Since I spent all of, um, a couple of minutes on this graphic arts beauty, I’ll blog my explanation of the plate.

The red line divides two aquifers on the 217 acre property. Laack has made a 92 acre marine sediment aquifer parcel into one lot. The other 125 acre basalt aquifer parcel is proposed to have 42 lots, with 42 wells.

This subdivision is in a groundwater limited SGO (sensitive groundwater overlay) zone where five acres is considered necessary to support one well. Divide 217 acres by 43 wells, and you’ll see that the average lot size of the Laack subdivision is 5.05 acres.

So Marion County might allow Laack and his co-owners to scoot through the requirements of the groundwater ordinance because the average lot in the proposed subdivision is larger than five acres.

Fuzzy math! Because the average is based on one big 92 acre lot and 42 small lots, which average three acres in size. Fuzzy math! Because the water under the single large lot is in a different aquifer from the small lots, so even though Laack may have passed a legality, his subdivision isn’t in accord with groundwater reality.

Those 42 wells are going to be built on acreages of mostly two to three acres. A well on anything less than five acres in an SGO zone is supposed to raise a red flag. But the Measure 37 claimant is trying to play games with the county groundwater ordinance.

Problem is, water is real. Simplistic formulas aren’t. That’s why a study of what really is going on with the groundwater in our area is needed before the subdivision is approved, not just a fuzzy math stamp of approval from the Planning Commission.

Tomorrow we’ll find out whether the Commission is more concerned with a non-sensical legality or the hard facts of reality. Hopefully, the latter. When people in our neighborhood turn on their faucets, they want water to come out—not fuzzy math.

We make the KATU Measure 37 subdivision news

Here’s two YouTubed videos of the Channel 2 news stories yesterday that featured our fight against a nearby subdivision. The first, aired at 4:30, was a brief one minute. The second was on the 5 o’clock news and ran 2:22.

For the benefit of our broadband impaired rural south Salem neighbors, who mostly struggle by with internet dial-up, I reduced the size of the videos considerably (to about 1.2 MB and 2.7 MB). This had the pleasant effect of blurring the picture, thereby taking years off of my visage.

Take a look. Our dog did indeed make it into a shot, just as I hoped for yesterday. You can watch the clips by clicking below, or via YouTube. Shorter story is here and longer story is here.

Shorter:

Longer:

Measure 37 could get us on KATU News tonight

Laurel and I were just interviewed at home by KATU, Portland Channel 2. We talked about the Measure 37 claim adjacent to our neighborhood—how a large proposed subdivision on farmland threatens the right of people already living here to not have their wells go dry.

I’m not usually a praying sort of guy. But I won’t object if you want to pray, “Dear _____, please make sure that KATU doesn’t put on air the close-up of Brian sitting at a table drinking a glass of water. Or at least, that the video is blurred.” (like the photo above; recently got a new camera; still learning how to focus, obviously)

Possible air times today (Friday) are 4:30-6:00, 6:30-7:00, and 11:00. Of course, we might be bumped by a traffic accident, fire, or animal story, these being the main focus of Portland TV news, based on our viewing experience.

I think we sounded moderately coherent. Editing, of course, will reduce us to a few short sound bites. Hopefully our dog will make it into the cut. If so, we’ll be waiting by the phone for offers from Hollywood to have Serena appear as an animal extra (or even lead).

A waterfall on the creek that runs through our property got filmed quite a bit by the cameraman, who thought it was beautiful. We emphasized that the water comes from the aquifer on which the subdivision would be built.

And that Larry Eaton, a hydrogeologist hired by Spring Lake Estates and the Keep Our Water Safe committee (chaired by Laurel) says that the subdivision’s forty three wells could suck dry the springs feeding the creek.

If KATU airs our story I’ll be sure to YouTube it, plus post a link to the Channel 2 archive if it’s viewable there. Even if I’m shown in an unflattering fashion. At first I was worried about whether the cameraman was on my good side during the water drinking scene.

Then I realized that both sides are my gray side, so what’s the difference, really? Anyway, I’m pleased to sacrifice my ego in order to publicize the horror show that Measure 37 has become.

The governor and legislature need to put this travesty of a law on hold until it can be fixed. Click on over to Jim Gilbert’s online petition and ask them to do just that.

After three hours, a moment of Measure 37 clarity

Well, another day, another front page Salem Statesman-Journal story about our neighborhood’s fight to prevent wells from being sucked dry by a Measure 37 subdivision.

The headline sums it up: “Concerns about water hinder development plan.” Once again (the first hearing was two weeks ago) the Marion County Planning Commission got an earful from nearby property owners as well as consultants hired by the Keep Our Water Safe (KOWS) committee that Laurel chairs.

Much of the testimony was technical and long-winded. The hearing lasted from 8 pm until after 11. But there was a moment when the absurdity of Measure 37, the ill-considered attempt to trash Oregon’s land use laws, came into cogent crystal-clear focus.

Leroy Laack, one of the owners of the 217 farmland acres that are proposed to become a subdivision, sat at the witness table for the first time. He told the commissioners that he’d waited thirty years to have a chance to develop his property (soon after he bought it, SB 100 went into effect and prevented productive farmland like his from being paved over).

“Property rights are the basis of our democracy,” Laack said. I thought, hmmm, I’m not so sure about that. Still, who can argue with such a fine all-American concept like “property rights”? Shouldn’t people be able to do what they want with their own land?

Short answer: no. One of the commissioners asked Laack, “Don’t your property rights stop when they infringe on mine?” Almost instantly Laack answered, “Yes, I agree.”

Honest answer, Mr. Laack. An answer that means your subdivision application should be turned down. Or at least, put on hold until a full hydrogeological study of the aquifer that you intend to tap for your 43 wells is conducted.

Even Laack’s own hydrogeologist, Malia Kupillas, testified that she should complete her assessment of the area’s groundwater capacity, and have it reviewed by an independent hydrogeologist, before the Planning Commission considered giving final approval to the subdivision application.

There simply is too great a risk that existing wells and the creek that feeds Spring Lake will be harmed by the proposed development. Larry Eaton, a hydrogeologist hired by our KOWS committee, discussed his most recent conclusions about the danger 43 new wells would pose to Spring Lake. Here’s his (4MB) memo, for groundwater detail junkies.
Download Sp_Lk_Post_Mt_Memo.pdf

The commission also heard from additional neighbors (many others testified at the first hearing) who already have well problems. Plant a subdivision into the aquifer that they’re tapping, and those problems almost certainly will be exacerbated.

My wife, Laurel, presented her own persuasive testimony. Which, I have to say, looked and read nicely thanks to editing by her blogger husband. I’ll attach her memos in case you want a quick education in south Salem hills groundwater problems, and why current Marion County planning policies are inadequate to protect against further declines.
Download testimony_for_sub_0603_for_107.doc
Download testimony_on_1997_pl_com_min_for_hearing.doc

Laurel emphasized what Rick Kienle, who established the foundation for Marion County’s groundwater ordinance, told her in emails and a phone conversation: it’s necessary to conduct site-specific studies to find out what really is going on with an area’s water supply.

You can’t plug some numbers into a simplistic formula and claim that there’s enough water to support a subdivision, like Laack and company are trying to do. Kienle says that even if the lots are ten acres in size, a site-specific study still should be conducted.

By the way, ten acres is the minimum lot size if someone currently applies to convert Marion County farmland to housing. By contrast, Laack wants to put most of his homes on two to three acre lots. As a Measure 37 claimant, he feels that he’s entitled to do so. Even if that hurts surrounding property owners.

We’re confident that the Planning Commission will end up making the right decision: to either reject the application or require proof that existing wells and water rights won’t be harmed by the subdivision.

The commission is going to have a work session next Wednesday to discuss Measure 37 legal issues. Then they’ll have a third hearing on the Laack application on January 9.

Leroy Laack tried to play the “I’m 78 years old and just want a chance to do what I planned with my property” card. But I don’t feel a lot of sympathy for him. Hey, life isn’t predictable. Situations change. Land use laws change. Everything changes, if you believe the Buddhists.

He could have profitably farmed his property if he had wanted to, rather than leaving it mostly fallow all these years. A local farmer testified that he tried to lease Laack’s land, but was rebuffed. Laack wants to plant concrete and asphalt, not Christmas trees or grape vines.

The farmer said that the 217 acres Laack wants to make into a subdivision are perfect for a vineyard. Laack and his owners would have made millions of dollars by selling their property to a grape-grower. They still could. I’d buy the first case of wine. That’s a promise.

Lastly, we just received an informative PowerPoint presentation (1MB) by Todd Jarvis on Measure 37 and water issues. Jarvis is on the Water Resources faculty at Oregon State University and involved with the Institute for Water and Watersheds. Take a look.
Download aoc_measure37.ppt

(You can download a free PowerPoint viewer here.)

Our Measure 37 fight makes the front page

Kudos to the Salem Statesman-Journal for today’s excellent front page story, “Groundwater dispute surfaces as a result of Measure 37.” Laurel is heading up the disputants, neighbors of ours who object to a subdivision being built on nearby farm land.

Some of her testimony at a Marion County Planning Commission hearing, where opposition to the development was strong from many property owners who don’t want their wells going dry, was quoted in the story:

“Marion County keeps allowing more development of new properties and new well entitlements in groundwater limited areas, with inadequate studies to determine whether even the current level of development can be sustained,” said Laurel Hines, a homeowner in Spring Lake Estates.

“Now, large numbers of new lots and new wells are being considered for this proposed subdivision on areas zoned only for farmland, where very little information is known about how many wells can be supported without causing harm to existing surface and groundwater rights.”

The statistics on Measure 37, an attempt to get around Oregon’s land use rules, are scary. To date 473 claims have been filed in Marion County covering 26, 781 acres, about 17,000 of which are zoned exclusive farm use.

Soon bulldozers are going to start paving over irreplaceable farm land. That’s why the legislature and governor need to suspend Measure 37 until this horribly flawed law can be fixed.

The Keep Our Water Safe (KOWS) committee that Laurel chairs will be leading the fight against the subdivision at a second Planning Commission hearing tomorrow night. As the headline of another Statesman-Journal story by Casper said, “Dispute about development goes beyond groundwater.”

A herd of KOWSians will provide persuasive reasons why Leroy Laack’s subdivision proposal needs to be turned down or put on hold until a hydrogeological study is conducted of the area’s groundwater. Hopefully the Planning Commission will do the right thing.

It’s aggravating that neighbors have to put so much time, money, and effort into preventing our wells from going dry because an avaricious developer wants to plunk 42 homes on two and three acre lots in an area that has been designated as requiring at least five acres per well.

Laack is quoted as saying that water rights are the same as development rights. He doesn’t see any problem with him making money at the expense of the people who already live here.

Well, I’m with the person who left this comment on the Statesman-Journal web site:

Another greedy, self-centered "neighbor" (and I use the term loosely) only concerned with filling his own pockets; and to hell with anyone & everyone else. Sorry, Laacky old man, but safe, clean drinking water trumps your desire to get rich by destroying the livability & beauty of your neighborhood.

On BlueOregon Jim Gilbert urges us to fix Measure 37. Take a moment and sign a petition asking the legislature to do that. We and our neighbors will be appreciative. Especially when water keeps coming out of our taps.

Measure 37’s bubble bursts at subdivision hearing

There was a loud pop in a Marion County hearing room last night. Dozens of our neighbors burst the bubble of Measure 37, the horribly flawed attempt to trash Oregon’s land use laws.

My wife and I have the unfortunate distinction of living near one of the first Measure 37 subdivision proposals to reach the county Planning Commission. Leroy Laack and his co-owners are out to convert 124 acres of beautiful farmland, perfect for growing grapes or some other crop, into 42 lots.

Just as Peter Bray predicted in his ironic Oregonians…Get Rich Quick With Measure 37! When I first saw this web page back in 2004, before Measure 37 was voted on, I thought it was humorous. Now it’s not so funny, because the paving over of Oregon by greedy landowners is coming true.

Thankfully, Oregonians are fighting back. Last night the Marion County Planning Commission got an earful. For four hours.

Dozens of people who live near the proposed subdivision, which adjoins our Spring Lake Estates neighborhood, testified about groundwater problems that already are bad and will be made worse by adding 42 more unplanned wells (and homes).

Laack’s hired gun planner admitted that the reason they want to build homes on mostly two to three acre lots rather than on larger acreages which wouldn’t cause such a risk to groundwater was simple: “To maximize income.”

Well, there’s nothing wrong with making money. Unless you’re earning it in a sleazy fashion. Person after person testified that their homes would drastically decline in value if their wells fail. And Larry Eaton, a professional hydrogeologist, testified that this is likely if the subdivision goes ahead as planned.

One neighbor said, “I don’t want to lay awake at night wondering when the faucet will go dry.” He shouldn’t have to. Yet Measure 37 elevates the right of privileged property owners to make money over the right of people already living in the area to protect the value of their real estate investment.

The Planning Commission heard repeated pleas from people who had bought homes adjacent to land zoned EFU (exclusive farm use), expecting that if the zoning were ever changed, it would be in a fair and open fashion.

But Measure 37 isn’t about fairness or openness. It’s mainly about making money (apart from the few claimants who simply want to build a single home on their land, after having been prevented from doing so by a regulation imposed after their bought their property).

Leroy Laack and company hope to be able to drain scarce water out of an aquifer located in an area that is officially designated as “groundwater limited.” As Eaton put it, it’s akin to putting 42 more straws into a bowl whose level already is dropping because more water is being sucked out than is going in.

Person after person pleaded with the Planning Commission to stop the unthinking pro-development madness that is Measure 37. There has to be a limit, they said. It isn’t possible to keep cramming more houses into an area where wells have to be replaced or deepened with depressing regularity.

Not one person testified in favor of the proposed subdivision, aside from Laack’s paid consultants. Yet often I heard, “I’m not against development. I’m just against development that harms the people who already live in the area.”

Our sentiments exactly. We’re grateful to own a home in Spring Lake Estates, a subdivision that dates from the early 1970s. But what made sense then doesn’t now. Today many more people live in the south Salem hills. Existing wells are draining the groundwater in an unsustainable fashion.

Yet Measure 37 attempts to roll the land use regulation clock back to whenever someone bought their property. Fortunately, there is an exemption in the law for health and safety concerns, such as the availability of water. Given the groundwater problems in our area, there’s no way this subdivision should be approved.

As Jeff Kleinman, attorney for the Keep Our Water Safe committee that Laurel is heading up, said last night: “Measure 37 isn’t a blank check to do whatever you want.”

(Update: A 5.7 MB PDF file of Kleinman's memorandum to the Planning Commission is available. It was given to us upside down; the Adobe Reader toolbar lets you rotate the pages to right side up; or, print the pages.)
Download KOWSmemo.pdf

You can’t ruin lives by taking away the water on which residents in our area depend. Nor can you make it difficult or impossible to farm on adjoining acreages by plopping a subdivision down in their midst.

The Planning Commission postponed a decision on the subdivision proposal for two weeks. We were pleased. It’s obvious that this Measure 37 development needs to be drastically scaled back or, ideally, rejected altogether. On January 2, we expect that the Commission will recognize this obviousness.

Time to get mad and suspend Measure 37

If you love Oregon, fire up your fury. Because Measure 37 is threatening to pave our state over with unregulated subdivisions. As the lead Oregonian editorial said yesterday, the true game behind Measure 37 now is evident.

It never was about letting little old ladies like Dorothy English build a home on family land that some bad bureaucrat said, “No!” to. That was just a ploy to con voters.

Timber companies supplied most of the money needed to pass the measure in 2004. Now we’re seeing why. Plum Creek Timber Company has filed a Measure 37 claim on 32,000 acres of coastal forestland. Many other similar claims are flooding in.

It’s all about greed, not striking a balance between private gain and the public good. These people don’t give a damn about Oregon. They won’t be living in the ticky-tacky developments that they want to plop down in the middle of forests and farmland. They just want to make money.

Folks in Umatilla County, not exactly a hotbed of liberalism, are fighting mad about Wyland Ranches’ scheme to convert 1,600 acres into home sites. The county commissioners have deferred approving this Measure 37 claim for as long as possible, hoping that the upcoming state legislature session will be able to fix Oregon’s land use nightmare.

Yesterday Laurel went up to Portland and took part in a 1000 Friends of Oregon press conference. She talked about how an adjacent claim threatens the groundwater supply in our Spring Lake Estates neighborhood.

People in our area are angry. They moved here expecting that either surrounding farmland would remain that way, or there would be a fair and deliberate process if someone wanted to change EFU (exclusive farm use) zoning.

Now they’re realizing that Measure 37 is neither fair nor deliberate. It’s a “make as much money as you can” free for all that pits neighbor against neighbor.

1000 Friends of Oregon says that it is time to suspend Measure 37 until the Oregon legislature is able to craft improvements to this seriously flawed law. Laurel and I agree. And so do the dozens of our neighbors who have contributed thousands of dollars to fight the subdivision whose 80 wells could turn our beautiful community lake into a dust bowl.

I took this photo today at sunset during a walk around the lake. Notice: No smokestacks. No McDonalds. No sidewalks. This is the Oregon almost everyone in this state loves, not the paved-over Oregon that Measure 37 is bringing us.

It’s time to get fired up. Pissed off. Righteously indignant. Our legislators and public officials need to hear from the people. Big corporations already have had their say through Oregonians in Action, the concrete industry’s best friend. Now the voices of those who care about Oregon need to be heard.

1000 Friends of Oregon makes it easy. Their web site tells you how to contact state and local officials and what to say. The game plan is to urge two things:

Temporarily suspend Measure 37, and development resulting from already-approved land use waivers, to allow the Legislative Assembly time to craft even-handed fairness legislation; and

Schedule hearings throughout Oregon so that citizens can voice their concerns about Measure 37 and help develop a comprehensive reform effort.

Do what you can. The bulldozers are starting to move. We’ve got to stop them. Now.

Support for Oregon’s Measure 37 is sinking

It's clear. Support for Measure 37, the attempt to trash Oregon’s pioneering land use laws, has crested. Now, after having experienced two years of nightmarish Measure 37 claims, Oregonians are awakening to a better way of dealing with property rights inequities.

A poll found that Oregonians would now reject Measure 37 by a wide margin. This goes a long way toward explaining Gov. Kulongoski’s new-found enthusiasm for introducing legislation in the 2007 session that would fix problems with this ill-conceived measure. (In 2005 I wrote, “Kulongoski caves in on Measure 37.” May that be the last time).

It also helps explain why property rights fanatic David Hunnicutt is sounding less fanatical these days. I suspect Hunnicutt sees the writing on the wall—“Measure 37 is going to be amended”—and recognizes that stonewalling on changes won’t cut it.

The Oregonian article says:

David Hunnicutt of Oregonians in Action, the group that wrote Measure 37, said he backs any plan to simplify the construction of modest Measure 37 projects. In exchange, he said, his group would consider supporting limits on development -- but not if one house is the limit.

Well, fine. How about a couple of houses? Laurel and I probably could support that. But not 82 houses on 217 acres that currently is zoned for exclusive farm use and is in an area with limited groundwater where five acres per well is the standard. That’s what our Spring Lake Estates neighborhood is facing.

The Measure 37 claimant, Leroy Laack, who wants to build all those houses on mostly two to three acre lots, is showing the ugly face of what was billed to voters as property rights “fairness.” Believe me, it is anything but.

Laurel is leading our area’s fight against the proposed subdivision. Thousands of dollars have been donated. Dozens of people have gotten involved with the Keep Our Water Safe Committee (KOWSCOM, which sounds like it should be part of the Defense Department).

She and I, along with other concerned neighbors, are putting in many hours fighting a development that wouldn’t be allowed under current land use laws. But Measure 37 rolls back the clock for a few privileged landowners. Regulations that protect the rights of many are waived in favor of a few.

That’s not fair. And this is why Measure 37 has to be changed. Today we got an email from a local resident who lives adjacent to the proposed subdivision. His well already runs almost dry in the summer months due to a declining static water level, so he’s put in a 1500 gallon holding tank. He said:

If there is more stress on the water table with all these new homes, I fear I will run out of water. My well driller says that there is no guarantee that more water will be found if we drilled deeper. Please let me know what I could do to help in your efforts.

John Gray, developer of the Salishan and Sunriver resorts, is seeking the middle ground that Measure 37 passed over. Way to go, John. More power to you. And to the Deschutes County Commissioners who have denied a Measure 37 claim to dig a mine, extract steam energy and build homes within the Newberry National Volcanic Monument in Central Oregon.

Seems reasonable, doesn’t it? But not to the selfish Measure 37 claimants who say they won’t give up on their efforts to turn a national monument into their private environmental disaster.

Tell Governor Kulongoski that you support his efforts to amend Measure 37 to strike a better balance between the rights of those who want to develop their property, and those who already live in the area. Your supposed right to a 82-lot subdivision shouldn’t take away my right to have water come out of the tap.

Could I become the anti-Measure 37 Dorothy English?

Sorry, Dorothy. You’re going down. Back in 2004 you were the face of pro-Measure 37 ads, a sweet 92 year-old who, as I’ve noted before, supposedly just wanted the right to develop her land so she could give some property to her children and fund her retirement.

Oregonians now reject Measure 37, which trashed our state’s land use laws and created a privileged class of property owners. So it’s time for an anti-Measure 37 icon to pop up.

I nominate me. My qualifications recently were burnished by a quote of yours truly that appeared in a Salem Statesman-Journal story by Beth Casper, “Report: Support for Measure 37 dips.”

Brian said Measure 37 proponents touted the benefits of reducing government and allowing people to keep their land and their own money. But the result is exactly the opposite, he said.

"It runs in the face of reality," he said. "We are all interconnected. What my neighbor does affects us. What I do affects my neighbor."

Why, I sound almost Biblical. In addition to New Agey.

In a wide-ranging interview at our home, Laurel and I talked with Beth about quite a few subjects. First, we agreed in person to a previously negotiated reporter-interviewees truce concerning which of us had the most attractive dog.

When I emailed Beth directions to our house I threw in a mention that she’d soon be gazing upon the world’s most beautiful Lab-Shepherd mix, our Serena. Beth questioned my claim, replying with a photo of her own Lab. I responded that the dogs were in different categories, Lab-Shepherd mix and Labrador, so couldn’t we agree that they both were world champions?

Once that issue was behind us, Laurel and I made many wise observations that didn’t make it into the story. One that I particularly favor, so will quote myself here, concerns the absurd assumption that if government action reduces the value of someone’s property, then they are entitled to be compensated.

That’s ridiculous. Governmental bodies are making decisions all the time that increase or decrease the value of assets held by people. If the Federal Reserve raises interest rates, the price of bonds goes down. Bond traders don’t moan and cry, “Government, reimburse me for the money that I’ve lost because of you.”

Similarly, I told Beth that both Laurel and I owned limited partnerships in the 1980s (we weren’t married to each other then, but had the same financial planner). They were touted as good investments because of the federal tax code in effect at the time.

Well, they weren’t nearly as good an investment after Congress tinkered with the tax code. As I recall, Oregon’s Mark Hatfield (or Bob Packwood?) was one of the prime movers behind the closing of this tax loophole. Overnight, the monetary benefit we were enjoying from the partnerships fell. A lot, I remember.

Investments rise. Investments fall. That’s the nature of investing. Why should property investments be the exception to this rule? The 217-acre Measure 37 claim next to our neighborhood is a proposed 82 lot subdivision, not a single-family home site.

There’s no reason why the owner of this investment property should be given a special dispensation to harm the limited groundwater supply in our area just because zoning laws changed after he bought the land. Tax laws changed after we bought our partnerships. Nobody compensated us for lost value caused by government action. Why should Leroy Laack and his partners get a free pass?

Thankfully, Oregonians are recognizing that Measure 37 was, is, and always will be unfair. It was good to see that Washingtonians seem to be rejecting I-933, an initiative that would be as harmful to our neighbor to the north as Measure 37 has been to Oregon. (Also via Land Use Watch, you can check out a persuasive anti I-933 ad prepared by the Sightline Institute).

Another poll shows that Californians are likely to vote down Proposition 90, a Measure 37 clone.

The tide seems to be turning against trashing land-use laws. I’m pleased to play my part in this effort. If that means being prominently featured in television advertisements where I turn the faucet in our kitchen sink and sand comes out, our well having been sucked dry because of excessive unregulated development by the nearby Measure 37 claim, then so be it.

I’m willing to be famous for this just cause.

(Note: our well hasn’t been affected yet since the subdivision is still in the planning phase. But Oregonians in Action didn’t let facts stand in their way when they made their deceptive pro-Measure 37 ads, so some karmic back-at-you seems justified).

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.

“Property Wrongs” report about Measure 37 features our neighborhood

Supporters of Oregon’s Measure 37, which trashed our state’s land use laws, like to talk about property rights. But now Oregon is facing property wrongs caused by the inherent unfairness of Measure 37, which created a privileged class of landowner.

Such is the conclusion of a report, “Property Wrongs: Lessons from Oregon on ‘property rights’” that was released today by Seattle’s Sightline Institute.

It features six case studies of the ill effects of Measure 37. Our Spring Lake Estates neighborhood is one of them. As I described in my previous post, a hydrogeologist has found that commonly-owned Spring Lake is threatened by a 215 acre subdivision.

The Measure 37 claimant, Leroy Laack, plans to sell 82 lots, each of which would have its own well. Currently his land is zoned for exclusive farm use. If it weren’t for his being able to roll back the clock via Measure 37, Marion County would require him to subdivide into parcels of at least ten acres if he wanted to change his zoning to AR (acreage residential).

So our neighborhood stands to get screwed, water-wise, while Laack plans to make out like a bandit, money-wise. Laurel and I are doing our best to right this wrong, along with many of our neighbors. The Sightline Report says (p.11):

Laurel Hines is another resident concerned about the new development’s effects on her property. She says she moved to Oregon in 1979 from the Midwest partially because she respected the state’s land use laws. Laurel says that in contrast to the shared sense of community at Spring Lake Estates, the adjacent landowner so far appears unconcerned about the impact of the proposed development on the community.

“We expected things to be the way they were and that the land use laws would protect us, and now we can’t depend on them,” Hines says.

Don Dean, a neighbor of ours, is quoted as saying that he believes he voted for Measure 37, but didn’t take as much time as he should have to review and understand the measure.

Like a lot of other people.

Oregonians got conned into voting for Measure 37 by Oregonians in Action, which made it look as if this would help people overcome heartless government bureaucrats who were preventing them from building a single home on long-held family land.

The reality is far different.

As this report shows, it’s a gravel mine moving in next door to an alpaca farm; it’s building a geothermal plant in a national monument; it’s surrounding a working forest with suburbs; it’s losing farmland and gaining lawsuits; it’s a subdivision sucking up a lake’s water supply; it’s farmers not being able to sell their land because of an adjacent Measure 37 claim.

Oregonians were deceived into passing a destructive law. Hopefully the states that are voting on similar proposals in November will learn from our experience.

Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and Washington: vote “No” on these so-called pay or waive schemes. Oregon used to be admired as a pioneering state. I guess we still are, but now we’re showing the rest of the country what not to do.

Fair land use laws protect everybody’s interests. Heed the lesson of the Sightline report:

In each case profiled here, Measure 37 has allowed one property owner to harm the interests, and sometimes the property values, of neighbors.

In case you have trouble accessing the report via the link above, click on this direct link.
Download Property_wrongsfinal.pdf

Behold the ugly face of Measure 37

Here’s what Oregon’s Measure 37 looks like. An 82 lot subdivision next to our Spring Lake Estates neighborhood. This is a map of the first phase, 43 lots. Which means 43 homes, with 43 wells, on land intended for exclusive farm use that already has limited groundwater.

Crazy.

If you voted for Measure 37, which exempted some property owners from complying with the state’s land use laws, you probably thought the face of Measure 37 was Dorothy English—a 92 year-old who, ads in favor of the measure said, just wanted the right to develop her land so she could give some property to her children and fund her retirement.

The reality is much different. It’s subdivisions on land that can’t sustain such dense development. My wife and I know that, because we’re experts on the groundwater problems here in the south Salem hills.

And a licensed hydrogeologist, Larry Eaton, also knows that. He’s prepared a report for our neighborhood association that concludes the Spring Lake Estates water rights likely will be adversely impacted by the Laack subdivision.

There will be lots of other adverse impacts also. This map shows the AR (acreage residential) properties that border the proposed cross-hatched subdivision on two sides. The Laack property currently is zoned EFU, exclusive farm use.

Those who bought property next to that farm land figured that either it would stay zoned that way, or there would be a fair and open governmental process if a change in the zoning were to be considered.

But Measure 37 isn’t fair. Or open. It created a privileged class of landowners in Oregon. These people can do what they want with their property, even if it hurts the value of adjacent properties that still have to comply with land use laws.

Currently Marion County requires that if land is re-zoned from EFU to AR, the lot sizes in the residential development have to be at least ten acres. Yet Laack and his three co-owners (none of whom qualify for Measure 37 other than him) are planning to sell lots that mostly are two to three acres. Again, special treatment for a few at the expense of the many.

Ron Saxton, the Republican candidate for governor, wants to continue the unfairness. Ted Kulongoski has been pretty wishy-washy on Measure 37, but he and his fellow Democratic office-seekers still deserve your vote if you want to restore equity to Oregon’s land use laws.

Environmentally they aren’t as Green as I’d like. However, these days Oregon Republicans love the prospect of putting an open-pit mine in the Newberry National Volcanic Monument south of Bend.

Their vision of Oregon is to Californicate it. If I wanted to be surrounded by subdivisions that devoured farm land, I’d be living in the L.A. area. Help stop the Measure 37 madness. Vote for Oregon Democrats in November.

Measure 37 proving to be Oregon nightmare

Just as those of us who opposed the dismantling of Oregon’s land use laws predicted, Measure 37 has turned out to be a nightmare.

People voted for it because they thought little old ladies would finally be able to build a family homestead on acreage put off-limits by rigid zoning restrictions.

Some of that is going on. Which is fine. I don’t have a problem with putting a single home on land that turned into “exclusive farm use” after a couple bought it as “rural residential.” But I do object to putting a pumice mine and geothermal generating plant in the Newberry Crater National Monument, as a Portland man wants to do.

Ted Shroeder, who lives in northeast Oregon’s Grande Ronde Valley, says that he voted for Measure 37. He also says:

If you polled a lot of people who voted for Measure 37, none of them voted for these mega-projects that are going to create multimillionaires. … People got bamboozled, they got suckered in. … I kick myself for being so naïve.

A neighbor of Shroeder wants to build 335 homes on 1,400 acres of prime farmland. Not exactly the little old lady situation that Oregonians in Action deceptively promulgated in their 2004 political advertising. Shroeder adds:

The way Measure 37 was presented to the public, prior to the election, they paraded the little old lady who had 20 acres in the ads, they had (her) saying, ‘Well, my retirement was going to (rely on the) 20 acres, and I was going to sell five acres, and the land-use laws won’t let me.’

… The other ad had to do with families who had farmed, say, a 300-acre parcel for a lot of years and (regulations prevented their children from putting) a house on five acres so they could stay on the farm. That was the appeal they made to the public.

… There are people like me who aren’t sophisticated voters, who don’t read the fine print in the voter’s pamphlets. In my naiveté, I thought I was voting to help relieve those sorts of situations.

Measure 37 is pitting neighbor against neighbor. Some Yamhill County residents thought they were moving to the country when they bought rural land. Now a Measure 37 claimant wants to build a 30-acre subdivision next to them. The rights of the many are getting trampled by the few.

A Hillsboro couple want to keep farming on property that has been in the family for over 100 years. Now a Measure 37 claimant wants to put 54 homes on 54 acres next to their land. They’re understandably worried that residents of this subdivision will object to farm noise, smells, and chemical sprays.

Scariest of all, property rights zealots are trying to export Measure 37-like initiatives to other western states. These efforts are mostly funded by out of state sources, as this excellent article by a concerned Montanan, Ray Ring, points out. Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and Washington are in danger of joining the Oregon nightmare.

Ring cautions:

The initiatives have titles like “Protect Our Homes,” “The Home Owners Protection Effort” and “People’s Initiative to Stop the Taking of Our Land”—as if the government is about to come in with bulldozers to sweep everyone off their property.

But here’s how the initiatives would work: If you could fit 20 houses on your land, plus a junkyard, a gravel mine and a lemonade stand, and the government limits you to just six houses and lemonade, then the government would have to pay you whatever profit you might have made on the unbuilt 14 houses, junkyard and mine. If the government can’t or won’t pay you, then it would have to drop the regulations.

Measure 37 has hit close to our home. Leroy Laack wants to put 80 homes on 215 rolling acres next to the Spring Lake Estates area where we live. He shares ownership of the property with other people who don’t qualify for a Measure 37 claim.

But one of the quirks of Measure 37 is that if Laack were to be compensated under this law for supposed lost value owing to a government regulation imposed after he bought it, if he owned a 25% interest the value of the compensation would be based only on his share of the property—one fourth.

However, if land use laws are waived instead of compensation being paid, then 100% of the property can be developed. That doesn’t seem right, but this is how Measure 37 is being interpreted in Oregon.

So even though a majority ownership of the 215 acres near us is by people who don’t qualify for a Measure 37 claim, the single authorized claimant gets to develop the whole damn thing.

Crazy. This is the nightmare of Measure 37. It doesn’t make sense, but, so far, you can’t wake up from it. Hopefully Oregonians will arouse soon and make changes to this disastrous law whose implications few people understood before voting for it.

Why Measure 37 doesn’t make sense

I realize that many Oregonians don’t want to be bothered with the details of why sound land use planning benefits everybody, and why Measure 37 is a disaster. I’ll keep things simple. Let’s talk lemonade stands.

It’s a hot summer. Every kid on the block gets the bright idea, “I’ll set up a lemonade stand on our lawn next to the sidewalk.” They all go to their parents for permission. The block is full of naysayers. “No way, kid. Find something else to do.”

Except for one accommodating couple: “Sure, honey. It’s fine with us if you sell lemonade.” The child starts her business. She does great.

Because she’s got the only lemonade stand on the block. All of the strict parents made it possible for the kid with permissive parents to make money. If there was a lemonade stand in front of every house, the limited number of cold drink buyers would be spread out among many competing sellers.

This isn’t rocket science. It’s basic economics. Which is why Oregon’s Measure 37 is founded on illogic. This law says that owners must be compensated when land use laws reduce the value of their property. Or, the laws have to be waived.

The big flaw in this logic is that the very land use laws that prevent people from using their property as they want to—putting ten houses on a five acre parcel instead of one house, for example—is the reason why their property is so valuable if those laws are waived.

Measure 37 proponents like to spout platitudes such as, “When a government regulation reduces the value of your property, you should be compensated.” What isn’t said, but should be, is: “That same government regulation also is responsible for increasing the value of properties.”

My wife and I live about five miles south of the Salem urban growth boundary. Between us and the Salem city limits is mostly farmland and homes on AR (acreage residential) parcels that aren’t suitable for farming.

Nearby, a Measure 37 claim has been filed on a 215 acre parcel that currently is zoned EFU (exclusive farm use). As noted in “Measure 37 hits close to our home,” the owners want to put 80 homes on the land. They believe that the land is worth $18 million with AR zoning compared to $650,000 with EFU zoning.

So they either want Marion County to give them $17 million and change, or waive the land use laws that are preventing them from selling 80 lots. Now, $18 million divided by 80 is $225,000. That’s pretty steep for a two or three acre rural lot, but is fairly close to the market price—especially considering that many of the lots in this proposed development would have nice views.

I can guarantee, though, that if Oregon didn’t have urban growth boundaries and other land use laws, small acreages would be selling for much less money because this state would have rural developments sprouting up all over. When I drive to Salem I’d be passing southern California-like sprawl instead of vineyards and Christmas tree farms.

Oregon’s land use laws limit the supply of rural acreages zoned for housing, so this increases the price per acre. Thus the only reason this Measure 37 claimant may make as much money as he thinks he will is because the laws he wants waived have produced the land value that he wants to reap.

In other words, most Measure 37 claims are parasitic. They’re sucking up benefits produced by the very land use laws property rights advocates hate so much. And in the process they’re reducing the value of neighboring properties. People in our area thought they could trust that EFU acreages would remain farmland.

With Measure 37, surprise! You can wake up one day, hear the sound of fir trees being felled, and find that your rural home is about to be surrounded by a subdivision.

I have sympathy for landowners who expected to be able to build a house on their property and then were stymied by a land use law. If all Measure 37 did was allow a residence to be built on a lot, even one zoned EFU, I’d have no problem with that. Nor would 1000 Friends of Oregon.

But most Measure 37 claims are by people who are trying to make money off of the land they own, not live on it. Like other financial investments, land speculation is risky. Markets change. Laws change. Economies change. Why should an investment in land be risk-free, which is what Measure 37 intends?

Back in the 80s my wife and I owned some limited partnerships. They were hot stuff in those days, because federal laws allowed investors to take losses and reduce their taxable income. Until the tax laws changed. Then our limited partnerships were much less valuable.

I don’t recall anyone claiming that the government should either reimburse them for the loss of value in partnerships they owned that was caused by a change in the laws, or give them a waiver from those laws. Yet this is just what Measure 37 does for land owners. It’s ridiculous.

In the upcoming primary and general elections, only vote for Oregon candidates who promise they’ll fix the flaws in Measure 37. This state is still livable, but the longer Measure 37 stays in effect, the less it will be.

Abortion rights and property rights

Why aren’t conservative brains exploding from the crazy contradictions in the Republican party line? I mean, how is it possible to believe that government can’t tell you how to use your land, but government can tell you how to use your body?

Recently we learned that abortion rights are being challenged in South Dakota and property rights are being upheld in Oregon. Conservatives were thrilled. But if the right to use your land as you see fit is sacrosanct, why isn’t there a similar right to use your body as you see fit?

I don’t get it. Dave Hunnicutt of Oregonians in Action says that Measure 37, the property rights measure that has been upheld by the Oregon Supreme Court, “provides every property owner in Oregon with the exact same right: the right to use your land in the way that you could when you acquired it.”

Though my wife and I consider Measure 37 a travesty against all that is right and good with Oregon land use planning, for the sake of argument I’ll temporarily agree with Hunnicutt that whatever laws applied at the time a person acquired his or her property should guide the use of that land—even if land use laws are changed subsequent to the acquisition.

And per Measure 37, I’ll also agree that if government wants to enforce new laws on that person’s property it’s “pay up or shut up” time. That is, government either has to compensate the owner for the lowered value of his or her land that was caused by those restrictions, or waive the new laws.

So I hope Oregonians in Action is going to be consistent and lobby hard for the abortion rights equivalent of Measure 37 if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade. After all, the Roe v. Wade decision has been the law of the land since 1973. Every woman who has become sexually active during the last thirty-three years has lived in a country bound by that ruling.

Thus conservative property rights activists should agree that these women have the right to use their bodies in the way that they could when they acquired sexual maturity. Hey, I’m just quoting the gospel of Dave Hunnicutt here, not some progressive abortion rights argument.

South Dakota wants women to bear children that were conceived as a result of rape or incest. Well, how much should those women be compensated for this intrusion by government on their freedom to use their body as they desire? A million dollars? Ten million?

I was raised by my mother, a fervently conservative Republican. But her conservatism was of the old-fashioned William F. Buckley variety: keep government out of our lives insofar as possible. Today my mother would be called fiscally conservative and socially liberal. Back in her day she was just called a conservative, because Republicans weren’t into imposing rigid moral standards on citizens. They believed in leaving people alone.

I long for a return of real conservatives who support the right of a woman to control her own body with the same fervor that they support her right to control her own property.
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Next day update: I knew I’d get some comments from people who thought that the difference between abortion rights and property rights is that another living being, a fetus, is involved in the first instance but not in the second instance. And, I did.

These commenters are missing the point. Two points, really. (1) The idea that there are “two bodies” involved in an abortion is subjective and open to question. What is a human? When does live begin? Is a fetus conscious? Does it feel pain?

Most people rely on religious answers to these difficult questions. An individual may believe in a particular religion such as Christianity, but governmental laws shouldn’t be based on religion. Our Constitution forbids that. So it makes sense that every individual person should be free to answer ambiguous moral questions in his or her own fashion.

Some moral questions aren’t ambiguous. Murder of a living breathing person obviously takes the life of, well, a living breathing person. Aborting a small number of cells that have not yet achieved living breathing status is much different. So abortion can’t be equated with the “crimes against the person” that one commenter cited.

(2) The commenters don’t seem to understand that, contrasted with abortion rights, property rights unarguably do involve other human beings. There’s no doubt about it, whereas there is a doubt when it comes to abortion. I know this directly, because I’m a property owner who lives next to other property owners.

What they do with their property affects me. And what I do affects them. By contrast, a woman who has an abortion, or not, doesn’t affect me at all. Or, so minimally I don’t notice (welfare costs might go up if an unwanted child is born, but I’ll just pay a miniscule share of this increase).

So this is the crazy thing about the conservative mindset: It doesn’t recognize that how a person uses his or her property really does affect other people, whereas how a woman uses her body really doesn’t affect other people—except insofar as they feel moral outrage if she does something with her body they don’t approve of.

This is the illogic of Measure 37. It presumes that land use occurs in a vacuum, that your right to use your property as you see fit doesn’t affect my right to use my property as I see fit. That’s plain wrong. Near us there is a Measure 37 claim that wants to put 80 homes on 240 acres. Eighty more wells in an area where existing wells already are going dry.

Yet the property rights zealots say, “That person has a right to do whatever he or she wants with the land. It doesn’t matter how other people are affected. This is a free country.”

My point is that if you think that way, then you also should say, “A woman has a right to do whatever she wants with her body. It doesn’t matter how other people are affected. This is a free country.”

Be consistent, conservatives. That’s all I ask.

Property rights and wrongs

Oregon is in the midst of a fierce battle between property rights fanatics and reasonable people, like moi, who recognize that a unfettered right to do whatever you want with your property is actually a wrong.

I hope the “Big Look” task force that will be holding hearings around the state and recommending changes in Oregon’s land use laws will pay as much attention to broad philosophical issues as narrow legalistic points. For disagreements over values are at the root of property rights debates.

What value does land have in itself, absent development? How do we value the needs and desires of surrounding property owners when deciding how a piece of land should be used? Should people be able to undermine someone else’s values in pursuit of their own satisfaction?

In other areas of life, questions like these can be resolved without the shrill “don’t tread on me!” attitude exhibited by property rights extremists. Smoking was banned on airplanes a long time ago. Everyone, including most smokers, came to understand that your right to smoke is subservient to my right to breathe.

But strangely, a person’s ability to use his or her land without restraint is too often viewed as some sort of sacred right. I say “strangely,” because if anything should be used for the common good, rather than private gain, it is land.

Cigarettes are made by people and for people. They are a human invention. So the cigarette you put in your mouth took skill, time, and money to manufacture. I think it’s stupid to smoke. However, you have the right to buy cigarettes and others have the right to sell them, just like other artificial commodities.

Land is different. The “Creator” made it (leaving aside who or what the big “C” is). Just like the oceans. Just like the air. We don’t allow the oceans to be sold, nor the air. People have the right to use these public goods, but no one can own them. Yet land is treated differently, in our modern societies at least.

For reasons I haven’t been able to understand, someone who owns land tends to think, “This is mine, mine, mine! I should be able to do with it whatever I want, regardless of how my doing affects other people.” Given the interrelatedness of natural and social ecosystems, this attitude is as nonsensical as the owner of a fishing fleet saying, “I can catch fish until they go extinct!” or a power plant operator saying “I can pollute as much as I please!”

My wife, Laurel, and I own ten rural acres. We live next to a couple who own five acres adjacent to a commonly owned lake. Last summer they became indignant when willows along the lakeshore grew so high their view of the water was impaired. Laurel oversees maintenance of the common property in our development and arranged to have the willows cut down. The couple was happy. They enjoyed their view of the lake and felt that it was their right to continue to enjoy it.

Then, in the fall they started construction on a detached garage. A large garage. A garage right in front of our own best view of the lake. We used to enjoy looking at the lake as we walked along the edge of our property. Now we don’t enjoy looking at their new building.

A small skirmish in the land use war. Legally, our neighbors had the right to build whatever they wanted, wherever they wanted. Ethically, that’s another question. For it was evident that they weren’t adhering to the Golden Rule: what they didn’t want done to them, view-wise, they did to us.

Hopefully the Big Look task force will help the citizens of our state understand that Measure 37 tilted the land use balance way too far in the direction of individual property owner rights. The rights of neighbors and other people have to be considered also when determining how land can be used. I doubt that even the most zealous property rights proponent would be overjoyed to hear that a motocross course is going to be built right next to his home.

And then there’s the whole question of whether it even makes sense to own land at all. We just leased a car. We will be using it for three years. We won’t own it during that time. Who cares? What we want is the use of a car, not the ownership of a car. Similarly, if land were used for a price, not owned, the feeling of “this land is my land” would be lessened, and an attitude of “this land is our land” fostered.

When I was involved with an effort to form a sustainable development where homes would have been built on leased lots, I considered whether humanity valued land ownership to such a degree that we’d agree to sell the entire Earth. Though some might view this as a reductio ad absurdum argument against unfettered property rights, I think it is the Oregonians in Action types who are reasoning absurdly.

Here’s an excerpt:

Who would agree to selling the Earth? Leaving aside such practicalities as settling on a purchase price, and securing clear title to the 126 billion acres of land and water, is the Earth for sale?

We might imagine a interstellar entrepreneur landing in her spaceship, and making humankind a generous offer for the third planet from the sun. Would we accept it, or would we be outraged at the very idea that anyone would view our terrestrial home as a commodity with a price tag attached, like a toaster?

It is exceedingly difficult to envision Earth being put up for sale, either to a terrestrial or extraterrestrial entity. Yet bits and pieces of Earth are sold all the time, some large and some small. Generally, this raises no alarm. But perhaps it should.

“I wish to buy this 20 square mile island.” “Very good, sir. I will prepare the papers while you write the check.” This interchange seems completely normal to us.

At what scale, though, does a property purchase become unthinkable, a moral outrage not far distant from selling the entire Earth. Could someone buy a substantial nation? A minor continent? The southern hemisphere? When is it right to convert land to private ownership, and when is it wrong?

There is no simple answer to this question. However, whatever the answer may be, clearly global sustainability is intimately connected with a communal land ethic. Every person depends on Earth for his or her survival. So the idea of making a commodity out of the foundation of life is repellant.

Nonetheless, most people have no problem with making a commodity out of acreages that are parts of the foundation of life, with some mightily resisting as “socialist” or “communist” the notion that land ever should belong to all, and not just to a few. These same people, though, almost certainly would reject the interstellar entrepreneur’s offer to buy the entire Earth.

Wise Measure 37 commentary

Opening up the Statesman-Journal today, I was deeply impressed with the wisdom of a letter to the editor about Measure 37. Then I saw the letter writer’s name and exclaimed, “I know that guy!” In fact, he was me.

Just to give the conspiracy theorists over at Oregonians in Action something to chew on while they’re waiting for the next check from the Asphalt Manufacturers of America to roll in, yes, 1000 Friends of Oregon put me up to this.

I got a phone call from a 1000 Friends staffer who said that Laurel or I should write a letter to the editor because we’re familiar with the nasty effects a Measure 37 claim near us would have on our neighborhood. I was happy to comply.

1000 Friends of Oregon is near and dear to my heart right now, as it should be for everyone who wants to keep our state from being southern Californiaized.

Still, I’ll agree that Oregon’s land use laws have become somewhat unbalanced. For example, there are too many restrictions on property owners who want to build a home on marginal farmland. But the solution to this lack of balance isn’t to tilt way in the opposite direction, as Measure 37 does.

In the course of looking for a Statesman-Journal online link to my letter, I noted some comments from people about the judge’s decision to strike down Measure 37. One made particularly good sense to me because it focuses on the theme of fairness that I also emphasized:

To all that are aghast at the recent ruling regarding Measure 37, consider the following. You own an upscale resort, one in which you have spent time and money to develop. You are heavily in debt to start the operation but business is good. The natural beauty of Oregon is available to all through your resort. You are booked solid through the high season and able to stay busy when others are slowing down.

With the changes allowed by measure 37, a neighbor of adjoining property comes along and knows that everyone loves his favorite style of bacon and ham. He has always wanted to become an agricultural giant but the right conditions have not been present. Suddenly, his financial status, property ownership and market conditions are perfect for him to start a huge pig farm next door to your resort.

This operation will be total, from birth of the piglet, to shipping packaged first class meat products to the worlds market. It will run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Someone has to feed and care for the critters. If you have never smelled a pig farm, it would be best to say you would enjoy being downwind from any paper plant in the Northwest compared to the odor from a hog production facility.

The only solution under measure 37 is for the local government to stop the farm and pay for the value of the property. After all, your resort was there first. Will this ever happen? Not in Oregon, not in this century, not in our grandkids lifetime. So we have serious questions of compatibility.

We have a system of government in which problems are solved. When a solution is reached some are happy, some are not. Our government and the Constitution from which it functions allow for fairness of issues. Because the majority thinks it is right has many times been proven to be unconstitutional. I for one applaud judges who study the law and can keep our society focused regardless of the ideas that some develop.

After all, it sounds neat to allow everyone to do what they want, when they want. And if government does not like it, it can pay me. Forgotten is the fact that the government is the people, ALL THE PEOPLE, of this state. The law has to be fair to all.
--Clint, 60, Retired, Medford

Measure 37 and the voters' will

Yesterday I listened to the Kremer and Abrams talk show on KXL. The conservative member of the duo, Rob Kremer, was frothing at the mouth about how 61% of the voters had voted for Measure 37 and now a single judge had struck it down, thereby thwarting the will of the people.

Outrageous, fulminated Kremer. He thought Judge Mary James should be recalled. Yeah, that would teach a lesson to judges who have the temerity to be independent and exercise their duty to uphold the constitution. Rob, do you recall the notion of “checks and balances” from your high school civics class?

Sometimes the will of the majority usurps the rights of a minority. It didn’t matter how many people were in favor of slavery, denying women the right to vote, or keeping schools segregated. Society eventually came to see that each of these policies was unfair.

Just as Measure 37 was. Exempting some owners from land use laws just because their property has been under family ownership for a long time is patently unfair. As I’ve noted before, my wife and I live in a groundwater limited area where you have to jump through a lot of hydrogeological hoops if you want to build a house on anything less than five acres.

But a nearby Measure 37 claim sought to put 80 homes on 215 acres of farmland. The claimants didn’t think they should have to comply with a Marion County ordinance that protects existing wells in groundwater limited areas. How fair is that? Everyone should have to play by the same rules when the game is keeping wells from going dry.

Further, it’s obvious that Oregon voters didn’t know what they were voting for when they marked “yes” next to Measure 37 in 2004. Laurel did a lot of calling before the election and she found that most people knew very little about this initiative. Here’s what a recent poll of Oregonians found:

More than two-thirds said growth management makes Oregon a more desirable place to live. Respondents strongly favored public planning over market-based decisions and wanted to protect land for future needs instead of using it now for homes and businesses.

So how does this mesh with the fact that Measure 37 passed handily? Answer: voters were deceived by misleading Oregonians in Action advertising. All they saw was poor Dorothy English, an elderly lady who couldn’t build on her land. They didn’t see the reality of Measure 37: irreplaceable farmland being bulldozed for subdivisions.

I believe in listening to the will of the people. However, Oregon’s initiative process is a terrible way of putting our ear to the civic ground. A dull rumble of Yay or Nay is all that can be heard after a vote is taken, not the crisp, clear guidance of a genuinely informed citizenry.

Lastly, how about the hypocrisy of right-wing talk radio? “Damn that activist judge who overturned the voter-approved Measure 37!” echoes over the airwaves.

But why wasn’t there a similar outraged cry when the Supreme Court recently held a hearing on the Bush Administration’s attempt to overturn Oregon’s voter-approved assisted suicide law?

On the front page of today’s Salem Statesman-Journal was a story that said a national poll has found that 64% of the public and 62% of physicians said that “physicians should be given the right to dispense prescriptions by patients to end their life.”

Assisted suicide is a much simpler issue to understand than land use planning. I’m quite confident that the will of the voters is to allow people to die with dignity. I’m not at all confident that Oregon voters want to allow selected property owners to do whatever they want with their land, regardless of the effects on the environment and their neighbors.

Measure 37 struck down

O Joy! We will be doing some celebrating tonight. Judge Mary James has ruled that Measure 37 is unconstitutional.

You can bet that there will be much wailing and knashing of teeth from Oregonians in Action. They'll try to get a clone of Measure 37 on the 2006 ballot, but I'm betting that real Oregonians will see through their B.S. this time around and vote for the 1000 Friends of Oregon alternative.

This is a happy day for everyone who loves Oregon.

1000 Friends of Oregon on right track with Measure 37 initiative

Laurel and I were thrilled when we found out today that 1000 Friends of Oregon intends to submit a 2006 ballot initiative that would mitigate the harmful effects of Measure 37, which allows selected property owners to ignore land use laws.

This isn’t an abstract issue of property rights for us. We live in a rural area south of Salem that has been designated a “groundwater limited area.” Expert hydrogeologists have concluded that, by and large, five acres is needed to support a single well. If development becomes denser than that, existing wells will be threatened and could go dry.

Several of our neighbors have had to spend $10-15,000 for a new well because static water levels are dropping in our area. More homes plus less rainfall equals groundwater problems.

This is a real-world equation that property rights zealots such as Oregonians in Action, which sponsored Measure 37, ignore in their abstract fantasy realm where people can do whatever they want with their land without affecting their neighbors.

In “Measure 37 hits close to our home” I wrote about a proposal to build 80 homes and dig 80 wells on 215 rolling acres a short distance from us. That Measure 37 claim now has been approved by both Marion County and the state of Oregon. So, as depressing as it is for us and our neighbors, it looks like this subdivision is going to occur on land that currently is zoned EFU (exclusive farm use).

That land also is part of the south Salem hills groundwater limited area. Dividing 215 acres by 80 homes, we see that the Measure 37 claimants want to put each home on less than three acres—probably considerably less, given that roads and other infrastructure will take up quite a bit of the development.

Marion County will have to decide whether to enforce the groundwater limited area ordinance on this claim. They should, since Measure 37 has an exception for “health and safety” requirements, and water obviously is essential for health.

But there’s a possibility that all of the planned 80 homes could be built, thereby depleting the groundwater that people already living in our community (Spring Lake Estates) rely on for their existing wells.

This is an example of why the 1000 Friends of Oregon initiative is needed so badly. Oregonians in Action isn’t seeing the whole land use picture. Property rights fanatics don’t recognize that everyone has the right to use and enjoy their properties, not just Measure 37 claimants.

Oregonians in Action doesn’t want landowners’ freedoms to be infringed by government without compensation or exemption from land use rules. Well, Laurel and I don’t want our own landowner freedom to be infringed by Measure 37 claimants who don’t want their freedom infringed.

Almost always, life is much more like a circular boulevard than a one-way street. “What goes around comes around.” Oregon’s land use laws have to reflect the evident fact that what I do on my property affects my neighbors, and vice versa.

It isn’t fair to allow one owner unbridled freedom to do whatever he wants with his land, without considering how that is going to affect the ability of other people living nearby to do what they want with their land.

When you live in the country, if you don’t have a well that pumps enough water for your household needs, you’re screwed. You might be able to temporarily run a hose from a neighbor’s house or have water trucked in, but those aren’t lasting solutions.

No working well, no rural home. It’s that simple. There’s no city water department to turn to, no hydrological angel who is going to rescue you from your aridity.

I agree with Cody Hoesly that 1000 Friends of Oregon and other supporters of wise land use planning need to find their own poster child, just as Oregonians in Action did with Dorothy English.

There are lots of people being threatened by Measure 37 claims. Oregon voters need to see their plight before they will support the 1000 Friends initiative.

Kulongoski caves in on Measure 37

Laurel and I were appalled to read in yesterday's Oregonian that Gov. Kulongoski is on the side of those who want to completely dismantle our state's pioneering land use laws. Kulongoski has aligned himself with Oregonians in Action, ignoring the advice of 1000 Friends of Oregon that it is better to do nothing about Measure 37 this legislative session rather than making an already bad law worse.

Senate Bill 1037 would allow transfers of new development rights when Measure 37 claimants sell their land. Measure 37 was supposedly about letting people build a single home on their beloved acreage, not selling out to developers who want to build a subdivision on farmland.

1000 Friends of Oregon is urging people who care about Oregon to contact Kulongoski and state Senators and tell them to stop SB 1037 in its tracks before it runs over our beautiful environment. Learn more about this issue here.

100 Friends of Oregon says, "Shockingly, the proposal to roll back our community and land protections is supported and being advocated for by Governor Kulongoski." Shame on you, Governor. I don't know why you're doing this, but whatever your reason is, it's wrong.

[Update: here's a more extensive view from a blogger about Kulongoski's new love affair with the pave-it-over Oregonians in Action property rights zealots.]

Measure 37 hits close to our home

For a lot of people, Measure 37 is a legal abstraction. For us, it means 215 nearby acres of farmland may become a subdivision. These rolling hills along Liberty Road about five miles south of the Salem city limits currently are zoned EFU (exclusive farm use).

If the Measure 37 applicants have their way 80 homes will be built and 80 wells will be dug in an area that already is designated as €œgroundwater limited. I call that eventuality AFU (all...up; you can guess the rest of the acronym).

Recently we got a phone call from a neighbor who adjoins this proposed development. He told us that the main spring which feeds the creek that flows into Spring Lake isn'€™t flowing this year. And it didn't flow last year. A long-time resident of our area said that this is the first time in thirty years the spring has gone dry.

The cross-hatched area on this map is the proposed Measure 37 subdivision. The AR (acreage residential) area below is Spring Lake Estates. Our two lots form the triangle (^) in the bottom left corner of the map.

The lots in our part of Spring Lake Estates average about five acres in size. Hydrologists say that five acres is needed to support one well in this SGO-5 (Sensitive Groundwater Overlay-5 acres) area of the south Salem hills.

But some property owners have been allowed to partition their lots into parcels as small as 1.5 or 2 acres. Quite a few of the lots immediately below the crosshatching have come into being through this sort of partitioning. We and other concerned Spring Lake Estates residents have tried to stop Marion County from allowing these small lots.

Mostly, we'€™ve failed. The county has ruled that lots near the boundary of Spring Lake Estates, where AR zoning adjoins EFU zoning, will have enough water because houses can'€™t be built on farmland. Yet now the county is being asked to approve a Measure 37 waiver that would put 80 homes and 80 wells on the same land that, it was assumed, would remain undeveloped and supply much of the water for people on the edge of Spring Lake Estates.

I realize that all of this zoning/land use talk can sound dry and complicated. It comes down, though, to some simple facts. The springs that feed Spring Creek lie along the AR-EFU boundary line. Those springs already have dried up, probably partially because of a lack of rainfall and partially because of the extra houses that have been built nearby on newly partitioned lots.

Without Spring Creek there will be no Spring Lake. This is common property that belongs to all 86 property owners in Spring Lake Estates. Everyone who lives here loves Spring Lake. And if push comes to shove, I think people will fight for Spring Lake (it has senior water rights).

Adding 80 homes in an area where groundwater already is in short supply is crazy. The zoning and planning in our rural south Salem neighborhood was predicated on the small acreage lots being balanced by surrounding farmland. Yet now the Measure 37 applicants, Leroy and Jean Laack and Margaret Rainone, want to be exempted from the land use rules that protect the livability of an area where hundreds of people already have homes.

Here'€™s all it takes to ask for $17,355,000 from Marion County under a Measure 37 claim. A couple of pages, plus some supporting documentation. The applicants figure that the land is worth $18,000,000 without those nasty land use regulations, while now it is valued at only $645,000. Hence, give us a check for the $17+ million or waive the regulations.

What a farce. There's no easy way to tell what the 215 acres is worth as a subdivision. It certainly isn'€™t $18 million. The applicant came up with that figure by multiplying an average sales price of $225,000 per 2-3.5 acre lot by 80 lots. Voila, a value of $18 million. However, the cost of development hasn't been factored in: attorney and surveyor fees, road construction, planning, marketing, and so on.

This ridiculously inaccurate estimate matches the inherent ridiculousness of Measure 37 itself: Voters were told that government should compensate people for a reduction in property values caused by land use regulations, but the backers of Measure 37 never intended that such compensation would occur. Instead, they wanted Measure 37 to be a vehicle for dismantling Oregon'€™s successful land use planning system.

And they also falsely implied that most applicants under Measure 37 would be individuals who wanted to build a single house on land that the government had €œtaken away from them.” Now we'€™re seeing the truth come out: attempts to build 215 acre subdivisions on farmland.

Today Laurel learned from Marion County that there are some problems with the application and that it might not be approved. We can only hope.

Measure 37 and societal collapse

Today Laurel asked the Marion County Commissioners a good question: “Should the right to profit from property take precedence over the right to sustain a decent life on the property one owns?” In other words, when a person’s desire for profit conflicts with the right of others to enjoy their properties, which right should take precedence?

Laurel was moved to use the public comment period to speak out on Measure 37 because she attended a meeting last week on Marion County’s implementation of this new law. She felt that the Commissioners didn’t have a good grasp of how Measure 37 threatens the health of Oregon’s environment and social fabric.

Neighbor is going to be pitted against neighbor, since land use rules now can be applied inequitably. If one person bought property in year X, the rules that apply to his or her land may be quite different from those that apply to a neighbor who bought property in year Y.

At the time of purchase the second person reasonably expected that the regulations which he or she has to conform to would apply to everybody in the neighborhood. But Measure 37 created favored classes of landowners. If you bought your property before a land use rule went into effect then you can be exempted from the rule, while those living next to you who bought their property later have to put up with whatever you decide to do with your newfound freedom.

Like, put a factory in a quiet residential neighborhood. Or build a subdivision in the middle of prime farming land. After last week’s hearing Laurel asked one of the county commissioners, Patti Milne, why she was so firmly on the side of people desiring to profit from a Measure 37 exemption, and seemed to be disregarding the effects of such exemptions on other people harmed by these exemptions.

Commissioner Milne said, “If Measure 37 claimants saw that their claims would hurt others, they would probably not go ahead with the claims.” Laurel was amazed and asked if Milne was serious. “Yes, I am optimistic about people.” When Laurel said that this was unrealistic, Milne said that Laurel had a negative view of people. Laurel replied that her thirty years as a social worker and psychotherapist gives her a pretty realistic view of people, and makes her confident in asserting that some people can’t be trusted to do the right thing.

It’s disturbing that an elected official would have such a misunderstanding of human nature. Patti Milne has such a rosy outlook, one might think she believes that society doesn’t need to have rules to curb human greed, ignorance, and selfishness. Does Milne believe that police should be abolished and the armed forces disbanded? Probably not. I bet she would say that we have to protect ourselves from criminals and threats from abroad.

So why isn’t society entitled to protection from people who want to harm the environment and the rights of neighboring property owners? Just as there are law-abiding citizens as well as criminals, so are there property owners with positive development motives as well as owners with negative motives. Land use rules are designed to protect the social fabric from ignorant, selfish people. Measure 37 has created the potential for a massive rip in this fabric. The 2005 Oregon legislature needs to get out needle and thread and fix it.

The January 3 issue of “The New Yorker” has a fascinating book review of “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed” by Jared Diamond. The author of the review, Malcolm Gladwell, says that Diamond “looks at history’s losers—like the Easter Islanders, the Anasazi of the American Southwest, the Mayans, and the modern-day Rwandans…. ‘Collapse’ is a book about the most prosaic elements of the earth’s ecosystem—soil, trees, and water—because societies fail, in Diamond’s view, when they mismanage those environmental factors.”

Measure 37 gets mentioned at the end of the review as an example of how a society screws up. Gladwell calls the Measure “intellectually incoherent.” He thinks that the debate in Oregon over so-called property rights “values” misses the point:

“One can imagine Diamond writing about the Measure 37 debate, and he wouldn’t be very impressed by how seriously Oregonians wrestled with the problem of squaring their land-use rules with their values, because to him a society’s environmental birthright is not best discussed in those terms. Rivers and streams and forests and soil are a biological resource. They are a tangible, finite thing, and societies collapse when they get so obsessed with addressing the fine points of their history and culture and deeply held beliefs…that they forget that the pastureland is shrinking and the forest cover is gone.”

Read the whole book review to fully understand what Gladwell specifically is talking about (the example of Greenland).

While Patti Milne and other property-rights advocates are fiddling around with their incoherent abstract values, Oregon is burning. Hopefully Oregonians will wake up and douse the conflagration before the structure of our fine state collapses.

Funniest truth in the Voter’s Pamphlet

If you read nothing else in the Oregon Voter’s Pamphlet, be sure to treat yourself to a smile and check out the last “argument in favor” of Measure 37, the horribly ill-conceived attempt to trash our land use laws and Californicate Oregon. This is an inspired use of humor to reveal the ghastly truth about Measure 37, cleverly infiltrating the “for” section of the arguments for and against.

The sponsor of this “$$$ Make Money Fast With Measure 37! $$$” is Peter Bray, who promotes a must-see “Get Rich Quick With Measure 37!” web site in his argument. It’s clever, funny, and right on the money, so to speak.

With just a few carefully chosen photos and some pithy well-written commentary, Bray cuts to the core of what Measure 37 is all about: allowing a few landowners to make lots of money by screwing the environment and the interests of most Oregonians.

If Measure 37 passes, god forbid, Oregon citizens will be footing the bill (hundreds of millions of dollars a year, likely) to implement a law that will turn farmland into subdivisions, open beaches for all into gated vacation spots for the wealthy, wetlands into wastelands.

If you need more convincing to vote against Measure 37, head to the “Take A Closer Look” committee website: www.takeacloserlookoregon.org. Don’t confuse this with the www.takeacloserlook.com URL that I initially tried, as this redirects you to a site that urges you to take quite a different sort of closer look. Interesting and intriguing, surely, but definitely unrelated to land use issues.