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Farm
bureaus denounce
Measure 37 |
Farm bureaus in 13 counties urge voters to defeat the
controversial measure on the Nov. 2 ballot |
By Gunnar Olson, Newberg
Graphic reporter
E-mail Gunnar at golson@eaglenewspapers.com
|
Yamhill County’s is among 13 county farm bureaus calling on
Oregon voters to defeat Measure 37.
Measure 37 – the son of Measure 7, which passed in 2002 and was
subsequently ruled invalid by the Oregon Supreme Court – would empower landowners to
demand municipalities compensate them when land use law lower the value of their property.
Dave Cruickshank, president of the Yamhill County Farm Bureau, said the
bureau joined in the opposition to Measure 37 “because of possible total disruption
of the land-use laws.”
“In weighing everything, we felt that the fact that this may implicate
the land-use planning system in its entirety, including farm tax deferral, outweighed
personal property rights,” he said. The farm tax deferral gives farmers a tax break
because they can’t use their land for, say, a housing development. “In a
nutshell, that’s how we felt.”
Under this theory: Whereas now a person living on agriculturally zoned land
couldn’t build a service garage, they probably could if the measure passes because
the city or county wouldn’t have the funds to compensate the landowner for the loss
of property value.
Cruickshank said he agreed with a pair of arguments made by the Take a Closer
Look Committee, of which the Yamhill County Farm Bureau is a member.
The committee says “Measure 37 is so poorly written it could put many
farms out of business by increasing taxes and rolling back safeguards that protect
Oregon’s farmland from overdevelopment,” in the words of Larry Wells, president
of the Marion County Farm Bureau.
The committee says passage of Measure 37 in November would create a lot of
extra paperwork for more than 300 local governments and state agencies. It argues that the
measure would require cities, for example, to establish administrative systems – more
people, requiring more tax dollars to pay their salaries – to process the claims for
compensation.
“We can’t afford the additional layers of paperwork, bureaucracy,
lawsuits and costs associated with Measure 37,” said Ed Chotard, president of the
Jefferson County Farm Bureau, in the release.
The proponents for Measure 37 take issue with both arguments.
“These are the tactics that the opponents are trying to use to confuse
the issue,” said David Hunnicutt, executive director of Oregonians In Action, a
nonprofit that fights for the rights of property owners. “Because they realize an
overwhelming majority of the citizens in this state support the measure.”
Measure 37 wouldn’t put agricultural businesses out of business,
Hunnicutt contended. The measure “is the only thing that will protect farming and
forestry from being regulated out of business.”
Hunnicutt said the majority of agricultural businesses support the measure,
including the farm bureaus from Jackson and Deschutes counties.
As for the additional paper-shufflers the opponents say will be needed if the
measure is passed, Hunnicutt said they’re not necessary. The systems now used to
process land use applications, he argued, could be utilized to process appeals.
Newberg City Manager Jim Bennett’s arguments supported those made by the
Yamhill County Farm Bureau. Particularly, that the passage of Measure 37 would force
cities to establish processing methods for the influx of claims.
“It’s not good news for cities, either way,” he said.
“Because the resources aren’t there. We’re talking millions, perhaps
hundreds of millions of dollars, that would have to be paid out, and cities don’t
have that kind of money.”
The alternative, he said, is for the cities to bend to the landowner’s
wishes and grant their previously denied land-use requests, resulting in sporadic cohesive
city layouts such as that in Houston, Texas, known among city planners for its former lack
of land-use laws.
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From Sept. 22,
2004, Newberg Graphic
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