Property Rights & Politics
Measure 37 Ignites Land-Use Debates In Many States
By Dan Richardson, 5-08-06
Like a virus intent on replication, Oregon's property politics are engaging multiple hosts. Measure 37 didn't only up-end Oregon’s land-use planning system, but has spread through initiatives, legislation and advocacy groups to a bunch of other states. We're talking places near, like Washington and Montana, and far, like Alaska and Alabama.
And, most recently, Wisconsin. Just this month, the Wisconsin legislature voted down AB 675, a Measure 37-inspired proposal.
“AB 675 talks about creating fairness for property owners. But is a system that benefits you but harms your neighbor really fair or right?” said 1000 Friends of Wisconsin in testimony opposing the bill.
That’s just one of the many battlegrounds. Property rights advocates are gathering signatures for Initiative 933 in Washington state. That initiative, if passed, would require Washington’s state and local governments to either compensate landowners when land-use regulations lower their property’s value, or else waive those regulations, just as Measure 37 has done in Oregon.
Meanwhile, another group is preparing a very similar initiative, I-154, for Montana.
Attempts at tilting laws away from planning and towards property rights, or pro-development, don’t come out of nowhere, of course. One blog reader commented on I-933 that the Seattle-area King County’s Critical Areas Ordinance affected only rural residents, and was implemented by urban county councilors. "This alienated many in the rural community, even those of us who consider ourselves environmentalists and progressives. For example the original 200 foot buffers around every rural wetland would have all but frozen all development in most rural communities in the Bear Creek watershed. ... The $279/hr King County DDES charges for any permit or visit including transportation time to and from Renton is just one of many excesses that is going to make for a number of nasty battles to come."
Anyone paying attention to Oregonians In Action (OIA), the activists who labored mightily and won Measure 37, was likely to realize that a state-by-state land-use struggle was in the offing. OIA predicted it, after all, writing in the Jan-Feb 2005 issue of its "Looking Forward" newsletter that, "As a result of the passage of Measure 37, efforts to prepare a similar measure are being made in Maine, Washington, California, Florida, South Carolina, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Montana, Alabama, Louisiana, Alaska, and Pennsylvania. OIA staff are getting fare more requests to speak and meet with groups than they can respond to."
One blogger, Eric de Place, at the Sightline Institute, has taken note of this spill-over from Measure 37. "The defining environmental controversy of the early 21st century in the Northwest states may well turn out to be the debate over property rights," writes de Place. "In the coming weeks and months, I'll be taking a hard look at the debate over property rights and property regulation, especially I-933 in Washington. I'll also share some lessons from Oregon, where property owners are just now coming to grips with life under Measure 37."
de Place’s vantage point might be a bit critical: The link to his article reads in part "property rights madness."
If the property rights/development movement is a sort of madness, it’s clearly of the manic variety.
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Property rights have no ontological status; they were not created by God for the elect of property owners. They are a creation by human society to organize the human economy, and there are many kinds of rights other than private rights.
There can be no doubt that the development of land, in these cases, have serious impacts on both ecological functioning and human society through pollution and degradation of human and wildlife habitat. The community as a whole has rights also and the community has a right to expect that property owners develop their property in reasonable and unharmful ways. In other words, there are property responsibilities as well as rights.
These people who whine about takings and their property rights say nothing about their property responsibilties, but the community has the right to hold them accountable for abrogating those responsibilties and damaging the community.
Prop 37 and similar "legislation" is about reserving the economic benefits of development to individuals and screwing the community as a whole.
Couldn't disagree more with your position. When a person owns a piece of land not yet developed, the government enacts new use laws that decrease the percentage of land where building may occur, and requires that the private property "green" area be left to aggressive blackberries and such, losing the use of that land is very much a taking of a valuable use from the private land owner when that wasn't the deal when the land was purchased. Added encumbrances of any kind affect enjoyment and value to the owner.
The fact is there are more and more humans that need more and more homes. It is obvious that the farmers and ranchers who are food producers are under assault for whatever reason, so if they can then subdivide and continue to survive good. I have wondered if a lot of the antipathy toward farmers and ranchers isn't envy that they own more than the so called environmentalists.
A true environmentalist starts trying to improve the environment in his own space, not worrying about controlling someone else.
Yo, the Enlightenment! We rejected the authorities making people into serfs with the Declaration of Independence. It used to be the feudal lord telling people, in the name of some superstition declaring the divine rights of kings, that "your grandfather was a farmer, your father was a farmer, you're gonna be a farmer and so are all your descendants".
The feudal lords are now the new urbanists and smarth growth fanatics. I'll assert that among the inalienable rights, are the rights of life, liberty and property--the latter the ability to control the fruits of one's labor.
I'm off to a fishing trip where the negotiation between man and beast is more forthright.
These land-use/property rights debates tend to fall out into absolutes — "No one can tell me what to do on my land." And of couse I and anyone else who owns property feels that, more or less often. But those feelings don't make the absolutist position thoughtful, or even accurate.
Consider for a moment that no rights are absolute. Free speech? Nope. (Slander/libel, copyright protections, fire in a crowded theater.) Gun ownership? Nope. (Licenses for concealed carry, prohibitions in certain areas and for certain classes of people.)
How about life? No — that's not an absolute right, either. There's abortion (justly or not), and the death penalty.
No rights are absolute. Property is no exception. So the line of absolutist argument simply fails to strike at the heart of the matter, which is the balance of personal liberty, responsibility and public good. The idea that liberty must be balanced with order isn't "socialist" or "feudal", but conservative and traditional.
Really, to reject the balancing act in favor of a state's de facto divine right as some planners might have it, or a land owner's absolute say, is the radical vision. It's hot air and bad politics, and so, so easy for us all to love and hate. Instead, let's demand that we and others reject the radical poles and make arguments about how the balance ought to function.
People will accept authority as long as it behaves in the best interests of the people. Once it veers into social engineering for some imagined utopian result we get these populist reactions.
Either side represents an extreme, while most of us sit in the middle, wanting predictable land use planning without the flights of evangelical fancy from authoritarians or libertarians.
I don't want a 50 unit apartment building moving in next door to me. Nor do I want a strip club a block away from an elementary school.
That's what we're talking about in Washington state. I-933 is using a chainsaw where we need to use a filet knife. Throwing out the protections that keep my property value high and my neighborhood livable because you want to a pig farm next to a cranky neighbor doesn't fly with me.
Examples of Excessive Regulations or Proposed Regulations that Damage Use and Value of Private Property
The state Department of Transportation has taken property through eminent domain more than a mile from a state highway so they can "re-mitigate" a wetlands project from years past.
The Seattle Monorail Project took private property through eminent domain for a temporary project that was never begun. Instead of leasing the property, they forced the owner to turn it over to the agency; now they can sell the property to pay for debts accumulated for their abandoned project.
A Western Washington city took property through eminent domain because it was affected by a city sewage treatment plant. The city then sold the property at a profit to a private developer and business. The owner of the property appealed and was thrown out of court on a technicality.
King County has adopted a "65-10" plan requiring some property owners to leave 65% of their property in native vegetation, and to have "impervious surfaces" on no more than 10%. Impervious surfaces, in King County, include dirt and gravel roads.
Thurston County is considering a set of regulations that would: impose 300-foot buffers along waterways; require some property owners to fence themselves out of part of their property for wildlife habitat; restrict gardening and agricultural activities; limit the use of some generators; and damage use and value of property by not permitting additional structures on some properties.
The City of Bellevue considered banning tree topping, which would have limited the view from many properties.
The City of Sammamish created a "lottery" to draw the names of residents to determine if they were allowed to apply for permits for uses already allowed on their properties.
The state Supreme Court has upheld a growth hearings board order for Ferry County to adopt habitat restrictions for certain animals that have not been seen in Ferry County.
A growth hearings board has ordered Stevens County to adopt property use restrictions to protect a bird that is not on the state or federal protected species lists and is found in great abundance across several states.
This is being abused terribly by the ESA. Private land owners are being required to carry the burden of some of these regulations themselves without any compensation. Introduced wolves that number over 3 times the amount predicted are eating ranchers out of house and home, the vast majority of their losses are not reimbursed. The big business environmental groups make millions telling the masses what "they" have done for the environment. But it is individuals that are carrying the burden.
This whole business has to be reined in fast.
Because of the smaller tracks a pure wolf is discounted. Maybe a 50-50 wolf/dog. May also be a 50-50 wolf/coyote. The method of sheep killing is certainly consistent with a wolf. Regardless, the rancher is out over $20,000 because he can't substantiate the "exact" predator.
I suspect a coyote cross simply becasue breeding with a coyote in the wild would be comparatively simple, and they have had that problem in the south where they introduced the red wolf. Now they are killing litters of cross breds when they find them. A dog would be much more likely to be seen. The distances are pretty big too, more indicative of wolf or wolf/coyote cross.
By the way my Montana trip was grand. Fly fished Kipp, Mission, and Hope lakes on the Blackfeet Reservation. Had two 'bows break my 8X Rio leader when they did power boat imitations. My largest caught was 6 lbs. Used mainly scuds and brown leech flies.