Measure 37 and More

Oregon’s Land Rush, A Gorge Court Case, and Light-Hearted About Biofuel

By Dan Richardson, 12-05-06

A note to our more sensitive readers: This article contains mildly opinionated statements, and an exclamation point. I made up one word, too.

This week includes a deadline for Measure 37 development claims in Oregon (not the deadline, but a significant one, in that hereafter claimants must have a use for their land that central-planning types have actually turned down, and not just pie-in-the-sky statements on their claim forms), and hundreds of landowners, big and small, have rushed to demand the right to pole-vault over Oregon's hurdleanimous land-use laws.

The Oregonian’s Laura Oppenheimer wrote a worthwhile overview of the land rush.

One interesting quote is from state Rep. Bill Garrard, R-Klamath Falls, who supports Measure 37 and says that many Oregonians have “a lot of misunderstanding” about the law. (It’s simple enough in concept: People should be able to use their land however they want, the heck with the neighbors and with land-use laws enacted since they bought the land.)

Says Garrard, “I feel it is the Legislature's responsibility to do something about it."

Well, sha-freakin’-zam!

You mean the Legislature should actually take action on an issue of concern to thousands of citizens? One that people have voted in support of, three times? (Besides M-37 in 2004, Oregonians have passed property rights measures in 2000 and 2006.)

Oh ye of Periclean stature, you’ve given us the Big Look. That’s a wise and worthwhile examination of the state’s land-use system. But what we need, sooner or later, is the for Legislature to quit looking already, and start doing.

• • •

Also Monday, the O hammered M-37’s bait-and-switch, wherein voters passed the law seeking justice for honest, small-time property owners, but ended up empowering corporate developers. I’m talking about companies like Plum Creek Timber, of Seattle, who have filed housing development claims on 32,000 acres of coastal forest.

(Insert Greek chorus here:Why, oh why, can’t the government just leave the little guy alone?)

Quoth the editorial, “Two years after the voters approved it, Measure 37 appears to be not so much rectifying injustice as inflicting it. Oregonians, even now we hope, are waking up and recognizing we've been had.”

The paper’s apparent wake-up that M-37 is a pro-development squeeze later in the game than others’, but it’s welcome nevertheless.

• • •

There’s much ado this week, then, about land and development in Oregon. And it’s not all about somewhere else: On Thursday, Dec. 7, the Oregon Court of Appeals will hear arguments in a civil case which asks, which has precedent, Measure 37 or the Columbia Gorge National Scenic Area rules?

The case won’t stop there, of course.

The court, as higher courts are wont to do, will likely take some weeks before issuing a ruling. And I suspect, given the numerous governments and interested organizations involved, that the state Supreme Court will have to take up the question eventually.

• • •

If land use doesn’t get you fired up — though it should — perhaps you'd perk up over something along these lines: Peak oil, oil addiction, the Iraq war, wealthy Mid-East regimes, air pollution and global warming.

What do they have in common (besides, you know, oil and money)?

Perhaps a common solution: Biofuels.

We’ve taken a very modest crack at the issue of alternative fuels from time to time, but nothing comprehensive. Enter Grist, the environmental news and commentary web site. The site is running an impressively ambitious series on biofuels.

Articles in the series range from how oil became the lifeblood of our civilization — with sober warnings on blindly embracing replacement technology — to which cars can run what alternative fuels. The series is insightful, useful, and, at times, fun.

Yeah, seriously.

Good show, Grist, ol’ boy.

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