The fourth floor of the Lloyd Center Mall is an unlikely
place to plot the future of Oregon—but it’s here that the Yes on
49 campaign has set up shop. Close to the skylights, atop the mall, it
is bright, utilitarian, and reminiscent of the refuge taken by the
heroes in George Romero’s cinematic nightmare Dawn of the
Dead.
But apocalyptic thoughts don’t seem inappropriate here; in a spare
and roomy suite of offices, Liz Kaufman directs the statewide campaign
for Measure 49 (M49)—a referendum appearing on the November
ballot to rein in the excesses of Measure 37 (M37), the 2004 initiative
that largely gutted Oregon’s longstanding land-use laws. In her
opinion, and that of many others, no other fight has had so much
influence over what Oregon will eventually look like over the next
generation. For many this vote stands between the preservation of our
landscape and what the quality of life is now like in sprawling cities
such as Houston, Phoenix, and Orlando.
PROTECTING DOROTHY?
In 2004, Measure 37, a citizens’ initiative sponsored by an
organization called Oregonians in Action, upended the state’s growth
and environmental regulations by requiring the government to pay
landowners for any potential loss of property values caused by land-use
laws. If governments refused to pay, they had to waive the
environmental regulations—in effect, it made decades’ worth of
smart growth planning completely unenforceable.
The campaign hook of the M37 campaign was an elderly woman named
Dorothy English, who wanted to build some houses on property outside of
the urban growth boundary. It’s arguably this small landowner that
voters had in mind when they voted yes in 2004. To honor the “little
guy vs. big government” sentiment, Measure 49 extends similar, but
limited, opportunities to small landowners. Commercial and industrial
development in protected areas is out of the question, but M49 allows
rural landowners to build one to three houses, and four to 10 if they
can prove that regulations actually devalued their property. This,
supporters claim, is enough to save anyone from the poorhouse.
LUMBERING GIANTS
But was Measure 37 ever really about small landowners? The numbers
tell a different story, one which bears no resemblance to that of poor
Dorothy English.
There’s a reason journalists and good government activists spend so
much time poring over campaign donor lists—the motives of each
side’s backers can reveal what’s really in store for the state. That’s
clearly on display with M49, and with M37 three years ago. The biggest
M37 claimholder, with over 109,000 acres in contention, is Stimson
Lumber, who donated the largest contribution yet ($200,000) last week
to the Stop 49 campaign. Stimson, a major player in the Northwest
timber industry for over a hundred years, was the preeminent sponsor of
M37 three years ago.
It’ll be difficult for the Yes on 49 campaign to track the movements
of the measure’s opponents. To conceal the sources and expenditures of
the Stop 49 campaign, contributions have been swapped back and forth
between Oregonians in Action and a shadow organization, the Oregon
Family Farm Association PAC. Proponents of the measure believe big
money is waiting for the last minute to swoop in. The Oregon Family
Farm Association PAC, it seems, is less an organization than the
handiwork of Republican State Senator Larry George. George’s father
also represented rural Yamhill County in the senate before him, and his
mother has a Measure 37 claim of her own. She owns a 394-acre parcel
she wishes to develop; as a Yamhill County commissioner, George’s
mother has jurisdiction over the claim (unless she recuses herself).
Larry George is also the principal of George Advertising, the agency
running the no campaign, which earned hundreds of thousands of dollars
running the campaign for Measure 37.
A dozen other top contributors to No on 49 have a strong financial
stake in the issue: Seneca Jones Timber, of Roseburg, has donated
$100,000. (Also clocking in at $100,000 is a Klamath Falls low-wage
temporary services company Hire Calling, which has previously supported
anti-tax initiatives sponsored by Bill Sizemore. Hire Calling CEO Dick
Wendt also heads up window-making company Jeld-Wen, and has a close
relationship to Sizemore.) The Swanson Group, a timber company
headquartered in Glendale, has given $163,500; Kalama, Washington’s RSG
Forest Products has ponied up $25,000; and J.R. Simplot, a large Idaho
landowner, french fry magnate, and supporter of right-wing causes,
donated $10,000.
It should come as no surprise that businesses that make their
profits by chopping down forests would invest so much in killing M49.
Timber companies get double the profit from the land they own under the
current M37 rules—after logging restrictions disappear, they can
clear cut forests, and then put up tract housing.
In Washington County, west of Beaverton, Stimson Lumber holds the
largest M37 claim, for nearly 15,000 acres subdivided for residential
development. The cumulative area slated for development under various
Measure 37 claims would immediately double the suburban land area in
Washington County—and the Stimson claim is the lion’s share of
that potential sprawl. Representatives from Stimson did not return
calls for this article.
WATER AND WINE
Yes on 49’s top financial contributor is Eric Lemelson, the owner of
Lemelson Winery in Carlton. Lemelson, who has a history of
environmental activism dating back 20 years and was also a major donor
to the No on 37 campaign, says, “I moved here when I was 19, from New
Jersey. I know what happens in a place that doesn’t have planning.
Cities like Phoenix and Houston are what you get when you apply [No on
49’s] libertarian principles to zoning.” He claims that the proponents
of 37 knew the government would not compensate small landowners for
their losses, and that it was “a way of eliminating regulations.”
Aside from the scenic and environmental spoilage that would come
with an unprecedented and sudden explosion of rural development in the
state, Lemelson predicts a tangle of water rights conflicts: Oregon law
allows rural homes to draw 15,000 gallons of water from wells daily
without a permit. Multiply that by the thousands of country homes
Stimson Lumber plans for Washington County, and you end up with the
kind of impasse that happens every time an area becomes urban
overnight.
Every rural property owner benefits from tax breaks as part of the
laws passed in the ’70s to protect forest and farm land. On his 200
acres of land in Glendale, Lemelson says he pays just $800 a year in
property taxes. This, he says, is growth management’s insurance that
even the lowest-income farm and rural landowners don’t go broke keeping
their land undeveloped. There’s no doubt the rural qualities of the
Carlton area are good for wine tourism. But what Lemelson’s own profit
margin demands, it seems, is very much in line with what most
Oregonians likely wish for the rural parts of the state: minimal roads
and traffic; clean water; clean air; and places someone would actually
like to go, or live in.
Not far behind Lemelson’s total contributions stands 49’s
second-biggest donor, at $650,000 (at press time): the state chapter of
national nonprofit the Nature Conservancy. Every farm bureau in the
Willamette Valley, however, according to Lemelson, has endorsed
M49.
PORTLAND OR MIAMI?
If unchanged by Measure 49, the law passed under Measure 37 would
eliminate the urban growth boundary Portland is so famous for. For
Multnomah County Commissioner Jeff Cogen, who has spoken on behalf of
Yes on 49 at numerous forums, his support for the measure is
personal.
“I grew up in Miami,” he says, “which had about the same population
Portland does now. This was in the early ’70s. We used to pick
strawberries in the Kendall-Homestead neighborhood, which was then
undeveloped and pastoral, and about the same distance from Miami as
Hillsboro is from Portland. Now, it’s all developed, and part of the
massive sprawl that ís Miami.”
Cogen believes that the choices Miami made to accommodate its
population growth to over six million were ruinous. “The place that
existed when I was a kid isn’t there anymore.” The 120 miles
from the Florida Keys to West Palm Beach, he tells me, are “nonstop
sprawl, Wal-Marts, subdivisions.” He doesn’t doubt the same kind of
ugliness is in store for Oregon should M49 fail.
“We have to love what we have here,” he adds. “If we take it for
granted, we’ll wind up losing it.”
Cogen believes this November election is the most important he has
seen in his 15 years here. “This is core to who we are and how we’ll
live together. Are property rights extremists going to define us so we
can’t think of neighbors or community? It’s about who we are. I think
Measure 49 is as big as [these things] can get.”
Liz Kaufman says M49’s opponents are counting on young people not
voting in the November 6 election—those who perhaps appreciate
Oregon’s undeveloped areas the most.
M49 has to win this year, Kaufman says, “because the development 37
allowed is already happening. If we don’t stop it now, by next year it
will be too late.”