Fun with zoning, Oregon-style
A few years ago, some sleazy developers spent a whole bunch of money pushing an attempt to gut the zoning laws in Oregon (laws that actually worked at keeping the malignant growth of Oregon cities down to a low rumble,) and finally found the right mixture of sob stories and outright lies to convince the voters to pass a “Zoning for thee, but not for me” bill over the anguished cries of the Oregon citizens who correctly recognised it as an open invitation for big developers.
It didn't take very long after that bill was passed before a large fraction of the people who voted for this turkey realized that they'd been duped, and a great cry went up demanding that something be done about it. Well, eventually something was done; another bill was brought up to clean up the wording of the first measure (by basically saying "if you want to build up to a dozen houses, go for it") and was plopped down for a special fall election. You'd think that this would be a simple fix, no? Small landowners can lay waste to their own property, but large holdings (which had been taxed as a favorable rate for quite a long time as return for the zoning) would not be allowed.
Wrong.
There's a massive campaign trying to get this bill turned down, based on the usual crop of lies ("Oh, there are only a few huge developers" [like the one that's putting out land claims against a quarter of Washington County] and "small landholdings won't be able to be subdivided" [which is exactly not what the new measure says.]) You'd think it wouldn't pass the laugh test, but this *is* Oregon.
I predict the new measure will fail 75% to 25%. And about two weeks after it's buried the outcry that "SOMETHING MUST BE DONE!!!!" will come up again, but this time it will come up to the refrain of massive residential development of the coast range.
I will just laugh. It's not my county that's going to be paved over.