Oregon has some of the nation’s best land-use planning laws. For 30 years, each city or county has been required to plan the usage of its lands lands in a way that meets 19 goals including things like housing and economic development along with preservation of forests, farmlands, and water resources.
As a result, Oregon has largely won the battle against sprawl. Suburbs are kept in check by urban growth boundaries which keep development out of rural areas. Farmland is protected from development in exclusive farm zones. The planning laws have helped Oregon to limit suburban sprawl and its attendant problems – traffic, pollution, loss of natural habitat and farmland, inability to keep up with growing demands for services, and the stress that sprawl causes.
But all of that may soon become a thing of the past…
On November 2nd, voters in Oregon passed Measure 37, aka the “Wal-Mart Expansion Act,” with 61% of the vote. This measure, advocated by property-rights supporters, requires state and local governments either to compensate landowners for losses in property values caused by laws or to waive the laws. Even worse, the measure is retroactive and applies to all past land-use planning decisions!
So, if you want to develop your property, but your land is outside of an urban-growth boundary, you can now file for compensation for the difference between the actual value of your land and the amount of money you would have made selling the land for development. No one knows how much such claims could cost, but estimates run into the billions. With budgets tight, expectatons are that few people will be paid, but lots of land-use plans will be waived. A lawsuit against the measure has been filed, but its fate is uncertain.
And already the process has begun. This week in Coos county, 2 landowners filed for a total of $2.15 million in compensation for lost development rights. One owner wanted $300,000 for land-use restrictions from the 1980’s. The other sought $1.85 million for a simlar claim. Of course, county governments don’t have that kind of cash sitting around, so the county simply waived the development restrictions for these landowners. Now, they’re free to subdivide and start the sprawl process in a rural area. Another 106 claims affecting 4,205 acres of land are pending. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
In the end, I think there is a good lesson here, both for environmentalists and for progressives in general.
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 couldnтАЩt build a home for their children on their own land.[…]
I hope this vote in Oregon serves as a bright red flare, reminding the West of whatтАЩs at stake. We mustnтАЩt forget to tell people how regulation helps protect rural areas from strip development. We mustnтАЩt dismiss rural people as a conservative minority. When we take what we have for granted, it can be lost.
Rebecca Clarren in High Country News
Since the Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1980’s, zealous property-rights advocates have been seeking to free landowners from restrictions on what they could do with their land. Measure 37 is one of their biggest victories so far, and worse it comes in the state that has been the shining example of “smart growth.” The problem with the idea of “property rights” is that what people do with their land affects entire communities. New development raises the value of neighboring lands, so farmers can’t pay their property taxes and have to sell out, leading to further development. With the development comes the demand for new services – water, gas, electricity – and new facilities – schools, fire stations, shopping centers. These cost money and can take a heavy toll on small communities unpreprared for the expenses. The cycle continues until areas of former farmland turn into cookie-cutter suburbs, filled with look-alike houses, traffic-packed roads, and stressed out suburbanites cursing their long commutes to work.
Living in a society means that sometimes you have to make sacrifices for the good of the community. We pay taxes so we can have the benefits of government. We submit to searches before getting on planes to be safe from terrorists. So is it crazy to think that we should be restricted in how we can use our land so that we don’t create onerous growth and sprawl which costs us both financially and in human happiness?
Resources:
1000 Friends of Oregon is leading the fight to preserve land-use planning in the state.
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