06/01/2007

By AARON CLARK  / Associated Press

Lawmakers added some finishing touches Thursday to a measure they plan to send to Oregon voters this fall that would scale back rural development under the Measure 37 property rights law.

The joint Ways and Means Subcommittee on Natural Resources adopted a series of amendments to a House-approved bill that supporters hope will make the plan more appealing to voters.

The measure and its amendments were approved on a party-line vote, with Republicans and property-rights groups complaining that Democrats were trying to ramrod through changes without serious discussion.

"They are putting lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig," said Dave Hunnicutt, president of Oregonians in Action, a property-rights group. Hunnicutt said the amendments would require Measure 37 claimants to "jump through more hoops" and result in "endless litigation."

The bill, which still needs Senate approval, is a rewrite of Measure 37, the law voters passed in 2004 that requires governments to pay owners for property value lost from land-use restrictions passed after the property was purchased.

If governments don't pay — and Measure 37 claims against state and local governments have already reached over $10 billion — they must waive the restriction and allow development.

The bill creates an "express lane" for claimants who want to build no more than three homes on their property. For existing claimants who wish to build between four and 10 dwellings, they must demonstrate loss of value due to land use regulations equal to or greater than the value of the number of homes they want to build.

A third option would allow property owners who have had claims approved by state and local agencies, and who have made significant investments, to continue development if approved by county agencies.

Proponents of the amendments said they better capture the will of the voters who passed the property rights measure three years ago.

One amendment, for example, eliminates a requirement for future claimants that would have forced them to show a 25 percent reduction in land value due to property use laws enacted after they bought the property.

Another change makes it easier for some surviving spouses to develop property.

Sen. Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene, said the amendments were a "tweaking" of the bill's existing framework.

"Listening to individuals and soliciting information, having discussions with people inside and outside the building, we realized that these were changes that were appropriate," Prozanski said.

But Republicans and property rights advocates said the amendments would make existing and future Measure 37 claims more difficult and costly to file.

The amendments were approved more than three weeks after the bill was passed in the House. Republicans said the bill's supporters used that time to lobby Plum Creek Timber and other groups that could spend heavily to defeat the revised Measure 37 in a fall election.

Prozanski confirmed that he had met with a wide array of groups over the last several weeks, including representatives from the timber industry. "They were receptive but they weren't willing to sign off before seeing everything in final form," he said.

___

The bill is HB3540.