Oregon’s state and county governments have received landowner requests to override land use laws applying to hundreds of thousands of acres since the 2004 passage of Measure 37.
But as the number and scale of claims increases, along with the money it would cost for governments to uphold land use regulations, the controversial measure’s long-term effects remain disputed by stakeholders and government officials.
The measure changed Oregon’s comprehensive land use planning guidelines, requiring state and local governments to either modify or not apply restrictions on landowners’ property or to compensate them for money they lost by not being allowed to develop under the regulations.
As of Nov. 2, about 3,484 claims covering 229,291 acres had been filed in Oregon, according to Portland State University’s Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies. The vast majority of claims that have been filed are for land in northwest Oregon and the Willamette Valley.
Statewide, the majority of requests to develop have been granted.
More than $6.1 billion has been requested for Measure 37 claims, but governments have yet to pay because the measure didn’t identify sources of money for compensation.
Lane County alone has processed about 60 of 150 claims, which apply to more than 11,000 acres, said Kent Howe, planning director with the Lane County Land Management Division. The county has denied four claims, and about nine claims are pending within the next month.
The measure, supported by about 61 percent of 2004 voters, faced a brief challenge when the Marion County Circuit Court overturned the measure, declaring it unconstitutional in an October 2005 ruling. The Oregon Supreme Court later upheld the measure, ruling that it did not violate federal or state law.
The philosophy underpinning the measure has not had much success in other states in the region. California, Washington and Idaho rejected similar measures during last week’s midterm elections.
The Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development has received a steady average of 35 claims per week since the measure’s passage, said Compensation Claims Division Manager Michael Morrissey, but the number of claims in October and November has been double that, averaging 70 per week.
“We’ve had a couple of weeks where one was over 90 claims and another was over 100 claims,” Morrissey said.
The number of claims will probably increase until Dec. 2, when a provision in the measure kicks in that changes the process for filing a Measure 37 claim.
After Dec. 2, land owners will need to file a land use application and have all or a portion of it denied before they can file a Measure 37 claim.
Because governments don’t have sufficient funds to compensate landowners, they are forced to “rubber stamp” Measure 37 claims, according to LandWatch Lane County, which opposed the measure.
“It definitely has impacted our staff resources,” Howe said. “We shut down our full-time equivalent efforts on long-term planning to deal with Measure 37, so we’ve diverted staff rather than hiring. It has results in us reducing our efforts in long-range planning.”
At a City Club of Eugene debate on Nov. 3, Lauri Segel, a community planner for the nonprofit planning services group Goal One Coalition, said the measure put pressure on neighbors of claimants to argue against Measure 37 claims because the county and state governments require little, if any, proof that land use regulations are reducing property values.
But Dave Hunnicutt, president of the private property rights group Oregonians in Action and a co-author of the measure, said the measure is the most overhyped measure in Oregon history because it hasn’t done all that its opponents said it would do. The measure hasn’t silenced neighbors from speaking against claims, he said.
Land affected by the measure has only been in the rural areas and represents a tiny portion of the state’s total land area of 61 million acres, he said.
The long-term effects of Measure 37 remain unclear, and Gov. Ted Kulongoski has commissioned a task force called the “Big Look” to make a report for the 2007 legislature on land use planning in Oregon.
Morrissey said the measure may have a large effect on the state, but its ramifications are difficult to predict because little has been built on the properties where land use regulations were waived.
However, the measure may still come under challenges in state courts, because about 100 lawsuits have been filed over the measure.
Howe said the county staff has done its best to interpret the measure in ways that are consistent with other counties and that are defensible in court, but there are several court cases dealing with who should waive state land statutes and on property acquisition dates that may have significant implications on how the measure is applied and carried out.
Unless the state legislature steps in, “it’s going to be the Circuit Court and Court of Appeals, and probably the state Supreme Court, that’s ultimately going to be deciding and clarifying the measure over the course of the next five to 10 years,” he said.
At the city level, the Eugene City Council will hold a public hearing for an $111,000 Measure 37 claim on Nov. 20.
Contact the city, state politics reporter at [email protected]
Measure 37 claims rise statewide
Daily Emerald
November 11, 2006
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