It's worth bearing in mind that, for most people, 5 new houses on smaller lots is a subdivision. You can take a look at some examples on Sauvie's Island, for instance, showing that zoned Ag land is often broken down into lots as small as 5 acres. So 1 house per acre.

I've previously mentioned that I thought that Greg Macpherson, and other presumed M37-opponents, were doing a piss-poor job of doing anything but EXPANDING Measure 37. (I received an invite to speak to the Rep personally, and was unable to due to an emergency, but plan to later in the week I hope.) If they continue pushing this notion of 5 additional houses per lot, it would be best for them to do nothing and let M37 rot (without transferability) until we can reform via ballot box in 08.

Thanks, do you happen to have a reference or citation for that?

I fail to see the legitimate beef with M37 considering the alternative.

The extreme urban alternative is a rich developer buys out a low-income apartment via bribing the city council to enact eminent domain and the city condemns the apartment complex. The city then sells it to the rich developer who then turns the low income apartment complex into Summer condos for Bay Area transplants who are there only 3 months out of the year (Pearl District anyone?).

I also fail to see the inherent wisdom in Senate Bill 100 which created our arcane, intricate land use system we still have today. What amendment in the U.S. Constitution allows for government to tell someone what to do with their private property?

Shoot, subdividing and building 5 houses on a lot seems hardly equivalent to yelling fire in a crowded theatre. Subdividing and selling those 5 homes at a market rate appears as doing a service to a person looking to achieve the American Dream.

What is the logic against Measure 37?

We have the Senate, House and Governor's office. We should be destroying M-37 any and every way possible. Screw those greedy people who think they can do whatever they want with their land. This is OUR OREGON...just like the group says. We were in the minority for too long and now it's time for a little payback. We all know that the voters didn't have any idea what they were doing. We need to step up and do the right thing here, and reverse this ridiculous law!

I do not understand the mind set of "those greedy people". We purchased land that was zoned RR5...the state rezoned it EFU...locked us up for over 30 years. Those that enjoy space around them....I suggest that you pony up and buy it! Why should we be made to suffer. How long have you owned your property? Alot of us were here before you.

I have some sympathy for Jackie Ralph, but would like to know what she did at the time the land was rezoned. I don't have a lot of sympathy for land held for "investment" purposes. I'm reminded of relatives whose agricultural investments went south when Carter stopped selling grain to the Soviets.

I've followed the arguments from the passage of SB 100. We are simply rethrashing those discussions - there are no new arguments. That being the case, maybe we should just start all over again and revisit each and every provision. My guess: we'd still accept the goals, and we'd still accept the concept of UGBs, and we'd still end up with farm zones.

"Those that enjoy space around them....I suggest that you pony up and buy it! Why should we be made to suffer. How long have you owned your property? Alot of us were here before you."

How about property owners paying compensation for zoning changes that enhance the value of their property, for instance zoning that keeps rendering plants, industrial manufacturing, casinos and other nuisances away from their homes?

And if you resent auslanders so much, then why develop more housing for them? The part of Oregon I live in looks exactly like Orange County.

The best things that could happen to Measure 37 is repeal.

I Just drove back from a trip to K Falls. On the way over, I took Hwy 20 through Sisters and then to Bend. I hadnt been there in 10 years. It now looks and feels like the San Bernadino area of LA, with slightly less density. The roads are dangerous, drivers fast and rude. Sprawl has permanetly altered the livability of the area.

In contrast, I drove back along Hwy 26. The views, the landscapes, the colors, the plant life and animal life are virtually intact. We can thank the Warm Springs Tribe for their protection of this slice of Oregon.

I congratulate the people along Hwy 20 who have increased their bottom lines, and increased their personal incomes so that they can add to their collections of RV's and Pole Barns. I do hope they enjoy their toys. We have all paid for them.

I suggest we turn our land management over to the Warm Springs Tribal Council, who understand at a deep level that not to change the landscape is the most courageous, most spiritual, and biggest gift we can give to unborn Oregonians.

Should they decide not to accept this burden, I suggest we repeal Measure 37 as gibberish. There are hundreds of landowners in my area of Chehalem Valley who now agree, even though they were duped into voting for Measure 37 by the George Clan. They now understand they have as much to lose as did the Tilikum band in 1828; some of our memories are long, and I hope Republicans remember that.

"What amendment in the U.S. Constitution allows for government to tell someone what to do with their private property?"

Well, young voter, the U.S. Constitution enumerates powers given to the federal government only. Amendment Ten reads:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved for the States respectively, or to the people."

Therefore, to answer your question, the 10th Amendment specifically confers the right to regulate land use upon the State of Oregon.

Ron, upthread, brought up a point I have wondered about for a long time.

People whine moan and complain about when the State or Local municipality changes a rule or regulation that they percieve reducing their property values.

But noone ever talks about when the rules and regulations that a State, City or other municipality, improve peoples property values.

It's all a web. We are all part of a larger community. We all gain and lose based on decisions that we all make as a community and seperately.

Measure 37 is one of the worst abortions ever perpetrated on the people of Oregon and it needs to be repealed.

Young Oregon Voter:

The extreme urban alternative is a rich developer buys out a low-income apartment via bribing the city council to enact eminent domain and the city condemns the apartment complex. The city then sells it to the rich developer

Bob T:

Proper interpretation of the 5th Amendment over many decades would have cut off this nonsense long ago. Politicians also love eminent domain, so please don't interpret the Kelo final blow (based on decades of precedents from the "We hate private property rights" progressives) as yet another reason to hate the powerful private sector people instead of the government.

Many progressives woke up too late when the Kelo decision was announced on the news. That's fine, but in the meantime they need tp apologize to everyone in the country for their generations-long re-interpretation (watering) down of private property protections that has now led to having no protection at all.

Bob Tiernan

Mr. Tiernan;

We dont hate private property rights. We dont hate the private sector. We dont hate you. I like having a property title and a mortgage.

BPA lines cross the northern section of my property, and I understand the "community good" this produces, at loss to myself in property values.

I refuse to concede that there is not a neighborhood value in preserving landscape and water resources, a community value in promoting "best use" of land for the local economy, a state value in regulating where and when development takes place, and a National Value for planning and rationality. These values, taken as a whole, have legal standing under the Constitution.

My individual rights as a property owner, are and always have been balanced with the rights of the neighborhood, community, state and nation. I understand that as a citizen, I do not have the right to individually do whatever I want with "my land" for any number of good and rational reasons. First and foremost, it is land which Natives owned and were dispossesed of. This gives me humility, a Christian value. My neighborliness, another Christian value, prevents me from making a whole ton of money by turning the land into a off-road vehicle playground. My community value, seeking to assist local farmers in boosting wine tourism, prevents me from setting up a machine shop and metal working plant here. I do try to love my neighbor as I love myself, you will know the reference. And as a State value, I appreciate the road here being provisionally designated a Scenic Byway so drivers and bikers and walkers can smell and see and hear the grand beauty of the land, which they apparently crave.

For these reasons and so many more, I reject your narrow and pinched view of "private property rights." I do have them, and yet they are not the same as yours, for religious and practical reeasons.

Sincerely, Rick T

YoungConstitutionalScholar,

You cited my favorite Amendment, the 10th Amendment. Thank you for reminding me. As far as Measure 37, the people of the State of Oregon have spoken and they spoke in 2004 to enact it.

The problem lies with interpretation. Forgive me for interpreting your words, but it sounds to me like this, "The average mainstreet American is too dumb to know what to do with their land. Hence, we need to entrust private decisions to the State of Oregon because only the State knows what is best to do with Joe Blow's property."

Unfortunately for you, state land use laws are not specifically written in the U.S. Constitution. Therefore, even with an allusion to the 10th Amendment, your argument is absurd. Property and due process protection of one's property is protected by the 5th Amendment via "nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."

Bob T,

Amen brother. The Kelo decision was a travesty.

We could have avoided this problem all together by just voting NO...oh well...such is life...

"The problem lies with interpretation. Forgive me for interpreting your words, but it sounds to me like this, "The average mainstreet American is too dumb to know what to do with their land. Hence, we need to entrust private decisions to the State of Oregon because only the State knows what is best to do with Joe Blow's property.""

If you look at the history of modern land use planning, zoning and redevelopment you'll find that the impetus behind them was not the government but big business. In post-WWII America, financial institutions and industries formed councils, funded think tanks, and financed sympathetic politicians toward the end of using governmental power to accrue property, secure workforce housing and education, and create favorable tax law to create and maintain growth in the regions in which they had interests. From these councils were born the redevelopment agencies, which were given unprecedented powers of immanent domain, powers of taxation and control, with little if any oversight. These weren't communists, either, but the CEO's of Bank of America and City Bank. RDA's originally operated as quasi-governmental agencies, with all the powers (more than the government, in practice) and none of the oversight of the government. Over the last thirty years RDA's have been stripped of much of their autonomy, but it's been a struggle to bring them completely under citizen oversight, as we see with Portland's Development Commission.

Why the history lesson? Because the pre-M38 climate favored big developers and banks. And who benefits the most in post-M38 Oregon? Big developers and banks, who have elbowed themselves to the front of the line for compensation, leaving a trail of small homeowners to fend for themselves at the rear.

M37 played on public fears of immanent domain and "takings", but in reality reflected the fact that changes in the regulatory landscape have shifted (slightly) from favoring big developers and financial institutions and so they decided it was in their interest to dismantle the land use mechanisms they had themselves put in place.

Young Constitutional "Scholar"

[replying to:] "What amendment in the U.S. Constitution allows for government to tell someone what to do with their private property?"

Well, young voter, the U.S. Constitution enumerates powers given to the federal government only.

Bob T:

I didn't realize you were a "Young Robert Bork".

You see, when it comes to looking at the 9th and 10th Amendments, there are statist interpretations and liberty-based interpretations. You and Bork are in the former camp because you don't trust people.

If your interpretation of the Bill of Rights is correct, then states and cities can censor and shut down newspapers without interference from the national level of government.

But yes, states and cities can regulate things, provided rights are not violated. Do you get it?

Bob Tiernan

"But yes, states and cities can regulate things, provided rights are not violated. Do you get it?"

No right is absolute. As the dean of boys at my high school used to opine, much to our chagrin as young libertines, "your right to swing an ax stops at my neck." As I noted above, zoning regulations that keep industrial uses away from residential areas could be construed by "liberty-based" interpretors as violating the property rights of animal renderers and Union Carbide stockholders. But municipalities seem to be on firm legal ground when creating land uses.

Rick T:

Mr. Tiernan; We dont hate private property rights. We dont hate the private sector. We dont hate you. I like having a property title and a mortgage.

Bob T:

So far, so good, although the opposite of “don’t like” is not necessarily “like”.

Rick T:

BPA lines cross the northern section of my property, and I understand the "community good" this produces, at loss to myself in property values.

Bob T:

I don’t even like to see that, although there is a huge difference between something requiring contiguity and something that is isolated and can be placed pretty much anywhere, like a muffler shop or a shopping center (there are cases where owners of both have been able to use the force of government to obtain what they were not able to obtain in a free enterprise situation, but since the people who didn’t want to sell discovered that their property rights had been watered down with the blessing and/or because of complacency among progressives et al. they lost out).

Rick T:

I refuse to concede that there is not a neighborhood value in preserving landscape and water resources

Bob T:

In other words, if you take a Sunday afternoon drive and discover some nice bucolic setting a few miles from the edge of the city, you think you have the right to use the force of government to prevent (with deadly force if necessary) the owners of the pieces of property along that bucolic stretch from “robbing” you of that scenery for all time. It must exist for your pleasure, for everyone’s pleasure, without you and everyone else paying for it. I don’t like that. I like bucolic settings as much as anyone else. It does pain me to see anything get built anywhere, even on an empty lot in the city. But I think your cure is far worse than the alleged problem you think the cure will prevent. Part of being in a free society is that you’re going to see and hear things you don’t like. Some of the things you’re not going to like are going to exist in various bucolic settings from time to time.

Note that you admitted that preserving landscape has a “neighborhood value” which translates to “public use” or benefit as has been defined this past century. Therefore you must pay. If you let the owner keep the deed in order to claim there is no taking, then that is like letting the people own their televisions while controlling which channels they can watch and on which days. To backtrack a few seconds, I personally do not like the definition some have come up with for “public use”, for it now means bulldozing an old lady out of her small home so that George Soros can build another mansion and pay more taxes to local government than that old lady could. Somehow having that money flow in has become “public use”. I don’t like that. But since we’ve gone beyond actual usage by definition, then you must pay for that vague and ambiguous “use”.

Rick T:

...a community value in promoting "best use" of land for the local economy

Bob T:

Oh? And elitist geeks right out of a college “planning” course knows how to make those plans and decisions? Are you defending the power of government to give taxpayer dollars to George W. Bush for a stadium for his baseball team, after which he sold it and made many more millions than if he had to pay for the stadium himself? I thought progressives hated this mix of state and business, since you guys throw that word “fascism” around quite often when it turns out that someone benefiting is a business owner you don’t like. But if it’s George Soros, oh, that’s okay. But you see, I want to say “Nyet” to all of them.

Rick T:

...a state value in regulating where and when development takes place

Bob T:

Those are two very different things to regulate and should not go together even if you support them. But anyway, I don’t get this, either. Right now, for example, it seems that the know-it-all rulers of Portland can’t get enough development. But they know that if they don’t get the people shoe-horned in here, then Beaverton or Vancouver or Gresham or Clackamas will get them. They want the power that comes with having additional people. They are not worried at all about any “burden” of having additional people (otherwise. They would have been so annex-happy some years back when there was so much unincorporated residential acreage out there).

And what’s the “state value” in this regulation?

Rick T:

…and a National Value for planning and rationality.

Bob T:

Oh my, a National Value! And you claim the word “rationality”. Please, spare me this kind of opinion. Can you explain why there is a “National Value” and what it means?

Rick T:

These values, taken as a whole, have legal standing under the Constitution.

Bob T:

So did “separate but equal”, for 60 years, thanks to Plessy v. Ferguson. I have my own opinion about what the Constitution and Bill of Rights mean, and those 60 years should not have happened (that decision, by the way, came about because of “regional value” in regulating the economy for the purposes of planning the future and social engineering since the white people of the South hated capitalism and what it was doing for their black population between the end of the Civil War and into the 1890s. They attacked a big bad corporation that apparently didn’t give a damn about their regional concerns when it sold First Class tickets to black passengers whose money was as green as anyone else’s, but I digress).

But if you want to accept and worship that “legal standing”, and salute it, then once again, I hope you’re happy with George W making millions off the taxpayers over his baseball team deal, or old ladies bulldozed out of their homes so that a politically connected developer can have his condo building there, constructed by Serena Cruz’s in-laws, Walsh Construction.

Rick T: My individual rights as a property owner, are and always have been balanced with the rights of the neighborhood, community, state and nation.

Bob T:

Oh nonsense! Have you ever heard of nuisance laws? Those laws, mostly perfectly reasonable and actually dealing with trespass of some kind, are the mechanism for dealing with any such balance. In fact, the USSC’s Euclid decision from 1926 which permitted zoning was accepted for its anti-nuisance value, not for its “protect the character of the town” value, which was rejected. Unfortunately, powerful people in this country’s past, in partnership with many in the population who bought into the nonsense of reducing rights under the guise of protecting them, bypassed nuisance law use and went right into outright violations of people’s rights to their property, getting such rights-crushing laws rubber-stamped by the USSC. The logic was often absurd -- did you know that in the Penn Central v. New York City case (another awful ruling worshipped by those who claim to worship the Bill of Rights) that one reason cited for approving New York City elitist’s aesthetic-based attack on Penn Central’s valid plan to build a skyscraper atop its Union Station building (as it was originally designed to handle) was that if Penn Central owners’ rights to construct that building were allowed it would “invalidate not just New York City’s law, but all comparable landmark legislation in the Nation” – in other words, the USSC felt that government had already gone too far down the road to suddenly start recognizing people’s rights again, or at least to draw a line to stop incremental steps right then and there. That’s like saying that, in Brown v. Board of Education, that it was too late to reverse “separate but equal” because, well heck, we’ve been doing it for at least 60 years.

Rick T:

I understand that as a citizen, I do not have the right to individually do whatever I want with "my land" for any number of good and rational reasons.

Bob T:

You can be stopped from doing any number of things if such actions or uses actually violate the rights of others. But you and people of your ilk from this and previous generations did not need or have any business dealing with such nuisances by giving government the power to bulldoze old ladies out of the well-kept homes so someone like George Soros can build another mansion and pay a larger amount of taxes into city coffers than the old ladies were paying –for the “good of the community”, or to allow someone like George W. Bush add value to his baseball team franchise which could then be sold for a multi-million dollar profit by him. Do you ever think about the implications of what you support, and what your like-minded predecessors supported?

By the way, here’s another example of how this collective mindset regarding property rights actually made things worse for you without you realizing it. In the early days of the Industrial Revolution, numerous small villages were facing problems from having soot-spewing factories nearby. But in free market, liberty-based society (despite what supporters of massive land use controls say) such factory owners didn’t have a right to pollute (trespass, as libertarians say) on their neighbors’ properties such as ruining the products of their orchards. Citizens successfully banded together and took such factory owners to court in what I guess would later be called class action lawsuits. They would win these cases sighting their own property rights as protections. But note that this sort of case has zero to do with “character”, or “aesthetics”. That’s very important, because when you accept all of this as the same thing with actual nuisance, then you buy into the argument used for many decades (some say still used today) that allowed zoning to keep out non-white people from certain neighborhoods lest their presence lower property values. These were often disguised as something else, but in some cases were probably stated outright. Now just how far do you want to go with this?

Anyway, to continue, it wasn’t long afterwards that slick lawyers, politicians, judges and business owners (all of whom wanted to weaken people’s property rights power as described above) began reversing the trend by using the collectivist, “good for the whole” argument in which individual rights are trumped by the right of the whole. What they did was to argue that since industry was good for the country (it was), like your “National Value” mentioned above, the right of such businesses trump the rights of individuals suffering from any violations of their property rights. It was all downhill from there. Although we deal with pollution now in other ways, the mindset that a collective “right” trumps individual rights remains, and we are not better off for it. The above was an example of your interpretation winding up biting you in the ass in that your ancestors had to put up with being polluted on “for the good of the whole”.

Don’t you just love history?

Rick T:

First and foremost, it is land which Natives owned and were dispossesed of. This gives me humility, a Christian value. My neighborliness, another Christian value, prevents me from making a whole ton of money by turning the land into a off-road vehicle playground.

Bob T:

I’m not interested in your “Christian Values” except for what they cause you to do with your own self (that you don’t lie or steal etc), but keep in mind that so far as I’m concerned, your support of the City of Portland from preventing 90-something year old Dorothy English from selling her land for multiple millions is, in fact, stealing. You just avoid doing it all by yourself. One day that land will be developed, but only after she dies and the establishment finds a way to work it so that a favored developer gets hold of it and develops city-approved “Smart Growth” development.

Rick T:

My community value, seeking to assist local farmers in boosting wine tourism, prevents me from setting up a machine shop and metal working plant here. I do try to love my neighbor as I love myself, you will know the reference. And as a State value, I appreciate the road here being provisionally designated a Scenic Byway so drivers and bikers and walkers can smell and see and hear the grand beauty of the land, which they apparently crave.

Bob T:

In other words, it’s easy when you declare someone else’s property to be “owned by the public” without actually taking it, as a cost of zero dollars to you. Do you really think that a house is pollution, or a nuisance? If so, then every house in America or in the world should be torn down. Again, how far do you want to go with this?

Rick T: For these reasons and so many more, I reject your narrow and pinched view of "private property rights." I do have them, and yet they are not the same as yours, for religious and practical reasons.

Bob T:

Sorry, but I reject your claim that I have a “narrow and pinched view” of private property rights. It is you who has the narrow and pinched view for mine is very broad and is limited by actual infringements on the rights of other people. I say actual, for I reject your claim that you have a right to nice scenery, with or without expense of someone else’s rights. I’m reminded of that great line from “The Outlaw Josey Wales”, so Don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining. Don’t attack my broad view of property rights as narrow, and tell me that your narrow, pinched view is broad. That’s very Orwellian of you.

Bob Tiernan

Bob T: Do you really think that a house is pollution, or a nuisance? If so, then every house in America or in the world should be torn down. Again, how far do you want to go with this? JK: Careful Bob, some people think that every house IS pollution of the native lands and must be eliminated. Man must be concentrated in tiny urban enclaves of Kowloon like density. That will leave a maximum of land to return to its natural state. Eventually man will be banned and confined only to the concentration condos that Homer builds. OF course our standard of living will fall to a tiny percentage of what it is now. Our commute times will expand dramatically. Our lives will be miserable, but is will be for the common good.

Just look at those other paradises run for the common good: Russia, China, Cuba.

Thanks JK

torridjoe:

"Amen brother. The Kelo decision was a travesty." (said "Young Oregon Voter")

On what possible grounds? The decision was fully supported by constitutional precedent reaching 50 years or more....

Bob T:

Bad precedents to be sure, but perhaps not a coffin with the final nail in it until your favorite USSC justices hammered it in with Kelo. That ruling was typical of what happens with incremental precedents.

torridjoe:

and centered around the fairly obvious truism that it's up to states to decide where their boundaries are in terms of controlling eminent domain.

Bob T:

Nonsense. The 5th Amendment does not say that states can decide what part of the 5th means while the Feds get to decide what the other parts mean. In other words, where does it say that states get top define what "public use" is but can't get to define what "just compensation" and "taking" means? You can't be selective.

Do you also think that the states can define their own level of press censorship?

Bob T