New West Network

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Planning in the West

Editor's Note: This is the third of three-part series on the fallout from Oregon's landmark rollback of land-use planning, Measure 37. Click here to read the first installment, and click here for the second. This project was underwritten by the Orton Family Foundation in conjunction with the PLACEMATTERS06 conference to be held Oct. 19-21 in Denver.

For 30 years, Oregon had the nation's most restrictive land-use laws, and when voters in 2000 passed a property-rights initiative only to see it nullified by the courts, public officials should have seen it as a wake-up call that the rules were alienating citizens. But they didn't, and thus it wasn't surprising that the follow-up, Measure 37, passed in 2004 with 61 percent of the vote.

It isn't hard to see what drove Measure 37: Too many planners telling people they couldn't build on their property; too many rural retirement dream-homes nixed (and too many grand development schemes); a gradual erosion of equity as Oregonians saw neighbors achieve things they themselves had had to forgo. And many held a growing suspicion that the state's planning program was about protecting open space, at their expense. It galled landowners to think that their options might be severely curtailed for others' viewing pleasure - with nobody admitting it.

That's what happened here. But if Oregon's the restrictive state, how can others around the West be so concerned about the far less-demanding land laws they live with? As it turns out, they are at least concerned enough in six states - Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and Washington - to have signed petitions to put similar initiatives on their fall ballots.
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Planning in the West

Camille Hukari’s family has been farming in Oregon’s Hood River Valley for decades, and she says she has no intention of giving up now. But she is willing to make a deal.

Truth be told, Hukari would love to trade the vagaries of the pear business for some financial security. She and her family farm about 70 acres, and she believes she could sell off one six-acre parcel for home construction — a transaction that could bring as much income as 40 or 50 years of pear farming on the same piece of ground.

"That's a no-brainer to me," Hukari says, adding, "I plan on farming until I retire — but I don't plan on farming 'til I'm broke."

Thanks to the passage of Measure 37, the controversial property rights initiative that gave longtime land-owners a way around Oregon’s strict growth-management regime, Hukari will likely get her chance to make that sale.

All around Oregon, Measure 37’s roll-backs, and their consequences, are being seen on the ground and in the halls of power. Oregon, after all, has had 30 years of state-led land-use planning, a regime some say conserved the state’s livability, while others said it stifled growth. Now, following Measure 37’s ballot victory in 2004, the state and local governments have scrambled to implement the law, interpret its nuances, and set about on a grand rebalancing of property law and rights called the "Big Look." [more]