Washington has apples.
Colorado has football and hockey. Oregon? We have land-use laws.
It’s what built our state’s reputation. Planning
textbooks often feature a chapter on Oregon, and environmentalists
and land-use planners throughout the West look longingly towards
our state Legislature in Salem; it’s the place where smart
people put a cap on sprawl.
That was before Nov. 2, when
Oregonians questioned their resolve to be sprawl-fighters.
Nearly 60 percent of Oregon voters across rural and urban
areas passed a ballot initiative that requires state and local
governments to either compensate landowners when environmental or
planning laws harm property values, or else to waive the
regulation. Written by a property-rights group that has worked for
years to dismantle land-use laws, the measure provides no funding
mechanism for processing claims or for the estimated millions of
dollars in compensation that could be due.
In a state
that can’t cough up enough money for public schools,
it’s safe to assume that cash-strapped local governments will
have no choice but to repeal land-use laws. Already, some county
and city governments, anticipating the measure’s passage,
have put the brakes on large planning projects.
According
to planning advocates, Oregonians did not know what they were
voting for. They identified with landowners wanting compensation
for decreased property values. They sympathized with rural
landowners who complained that strict planning regulations meant
they couldn’t build a home for their children on their own
land.
Yet, most of us living in Oregon’s cities
benefit from land-use controls. I can drive 15 miles outside
Portland and see forests and farmland. Our urban growth boundaries,
while far from perfect, rein in sprawl. It’s why so many of
us have moved here and why those of us raised in the Northwest
choose to stay. But while we enjoy this lovely landscape, many of
us have no idea how the system works.
Utter the terms
“urban growth boundary,” “land-use planning” or “transit-oriented
development” at a social gathering, and see how many people want to
talk to you.
This measure passed because Oregon is a
different place than it was 30 years ago, when the governor and
state Legislature protected rural areas from urban encroachment.
Born with huge public support and built with grassroots spirit
through 15 months of public meetings, our original land-use laws
truly reflected what Oregonians wanted their landscape to look
like.
It’s different now. Many voters —
retirees, California refugees, young urbanites —
weren’t around for the original conversation. Planners and
environmentalists, distracted by efforts to protect the status quo
from property-rights activists, neglected to educate the rest of us
about why land-use laws are necessary. We didn’t care to
learn how planning keeps taxes low and the views majestic. When
planning advocates tried to convince voters through letters to the
editor, public forums and cable TV, it was too little, too late.
Now, the leadership to salvage the remnants of our
land-use laws must come from state legislators, who are at the
mercy of public opinion. Gov. Ted Kulongoski and the editorial
pages of our two biggest newspapers have called for lawmakers to
reform the measure by limiting payouts to landowners and
eliminating a retroactivity clause, which would allow claims
originating decades ago. Whatever they come up with, with it
won’t be easy. This is a complicated system; simple laws such
as this initiative only create more headaches.
Slow-growth advocates throughout the West watched this initiative
very closely, and many now voice despair at the news of
Oregon’s crippled system.
“It’s
heartbreaking,” says Dennis Glick of the Sonoran Institute, a
nonprofit group that helps communities plan for growth. “Oregon has
inspired me because I’ve seen how well land-use laws work
there. If its own citizens refuse to recognize the benefits, I fear
for the future of our Western landscapes.”
Maybe stopping
sprawl is an impossible goal. Maybe we’re destined to trade
farmland for strip malls and subdivisions. Maybe the West has only
remained beautiful and open and vast in some places because there
were fewer of us to muck it up.
I hope this vote in
Oregon serves as a bright red flare, reminding the West of
what’s at stake. We mustn’t forget to tell people how
regulation helps protect rural areas from strip development. We
mustn’t dismiss rural people as a conservative minority. When
we take what we have for granted, it can be lost.
Rebecca Clarren is a contributor to Writers on the Range,
a service of High Country News (hcn.org). She
writes in Portland, Oregon.
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