Hood River News

Senator Floyd Prozanski may have one of the hottest seats in the Senate — if not the state — when the 2007 legislature convenes in Salem on Jan. 8.

Committee assignments handed out Dec. 15 tapped Prozanski, a Eugene Democrat representing District 4 in southern Lane and northern Douglas counties, to chair the Special Senate Committee on Land Use Fairness.

The committee was created due to widespread concern over Measure 37, the property rights law that requires compensation for value lost to regulation, or waiver of the regulation.

Many believe that thousands of Measure 37 claims statewide, nearly half of them filed in the weeks before an initial deadline Dec. 4, could create far more rural residential development than Oregon voters expected, or intended, when they approved the initiative 61 to 39 percent in 2004.

On the other hand, the measure itself was about fairness, a response to restrictive land-use laws against which proponents bridled.

Among those concerned over the law’s outcomes — enough to have formed a semi-secretive group to work on the issue nine months ago — is Gov. Ted Kulongoski.

The governor announced “his” group back in March, and unveiled his evolving intentions in an Oct. 13 letter to the Oregon Land Use Task Force (the “Big Look”), saying he had “directed his staff to draft … a legislative concept with the expectation that it be introduced” in the 2007 session.

One task force member recently referred to the letter as “a mystery … we have not yet seen a proposal.”

But news reports this month made clear that the governor has a plan, and many expect him to exhibit leadership in crafting policy to “fix” Measure 37.

So just what, then, is Prozanski’s committee likely to face?

A sort of Big-Look-writ-small, no doubt, with testimony from all major players in current land use debates, who have also testified to the Big Look in its ongoing three-year review of the statewide planning system.

“It will be an open process,” Prozanski told this reporter. “Transparent. There will be opportunity for public input … I need to hear from as many perspectives as possible … to make the best decision based on the information.”

Prozanski said he has spoken with Charlie Ringo, the former state senator who last attempted land use compromise in the 2005 legislature, his failure so frustrating that he declined to seek re-election.

Prozanski called the scope of his committee’s responsibility “fluid,” but anticipated focus on “unintended consequences” of the measure, impacts on lands surrounding Measure 37 claims, assessment of voters’ intent, and consideration of any ambiguities in the measure.

“The state has a duty to offer guidance as to how local claims should be reviewed and interpreted to implement Measure 37’s language,” Prozanski said.

Outcomes could include a bill, or a referral to the voters, he added. The fairness committee is one of two in the Senate and several in the House from which a proposal could come, but is has been called the most likely origin of any Measure 37 “fix.”

Bob Stacey, director of land-use watchdog 1,000 Friends of Oregon, suggested not long ago that the governor’s main take, expressed in his letter — that the majority of voting Oregonians just wanted the right to build a home on their land — skirts the fact that to property rights advocates, the right to subdivide, in cases where it had been removed by regulation, is non-negotiable.

Oregonians in Action, the main property rights proponent, put localization of planning authority and regionalization of LCDC at the top of its legislative agenda, announced in September. President Dave Hunnicutt has said he thinks the legislature may have too much else to do to tackle a “no-win” issue such as Measure 37 revision.

“It’s still too early to tell what, if anything, the ’07 legislature will do in regard to M37,” Hunnicutt wrote to this reporter in an e-mail.

Thousand Friends’ legislative agenda, announced Dec. 4, calls for suspension of Measure 37 claims until issues can be resolved. Stacey made clear his group believes certain Measure 37 claims not “vested” — made constitutionally unalterable by physical improvements — can still be voided by legislative action.

What constitutes “vesting”?

“Concrete,” was Stacey’s reply — meaning building foundations, an action mostly confounded by ongoing debate over transferability of Measure 37 claims.

Others think it will take less. “There is flexibility in the legislature over where they draw that line,” said Lane Shetterly, director of the state Department of Land Conservation and Development, regarding vesting.

“They’d have a case,” was how another Big Look member described landowners’ chances of success in contesting any such rescission of an M37 claim.

Portland attorney Ed Sullivan, who is active in setting legislative direction for the Oregon chapter of the American Planning Association, said the group is aiming for four specific corrections to Measure 37: adding a statute of limitations; limiting the measure to past, not future, regulations; allowing reciprocal attorneys’ fees; and “valuation reform,” meaning clarification of how lost value is calculated, a task for which jurisdictions had no precedent when M37 was passed.

Well-known Oregon developer John Gray, who has elected to weigh in on the side of constraining M37, in a report entitled “Land Use Planning Information for the Citizens of Oregon,” (available from the Oregon Community Foundation), has called for similar clarifications.

Asked what his reaction would be if lobbied heavily by any interest group, Prozanski said he’d “give them as much of my time as I’ll give anyone else.”

The other members of the Special Senate Committee on Land Use Fairness include Larry George, R-Sherwood, District 13; Betsy Johnson, D-Scappoose, District 16; Kurt Schrader, D-Canby, District 20; and Roger Beyer, R-Molalla, District 9.

Both Prozanski and Beyer are also on the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee.

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Portland writer Sam Lowry is a former resident of Hood River and Goldendale who writes on state land use issues. He wrote an overview of The Big Look committee in the Dec. 27 edition.