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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Valley&State Backpage O&E Sports Archives Classifieds Faith&Beliefs Obituaries Revels October 20, 2004 Measure 37: A disaster waiting to happen By Pepper Trail Ashland Let's imagine for a moment that you woke up this morning and someone handed you $344 million of Oregon's taxpayers� money, with strict instructions that you must use it to benefit our great state. How would you spend that money? Well, everybody knows that our schools are desperately short of funds, as are the state police and our court system and the Oregon Health Plan and services for the elderly and our state parks ... the list is a long one. The sponsors of Measure 37 don't want to use the money for any of that. No, instead they want us to hand the money over to private developers. And why? To pay off those developers� claims that their property values have been reduced by Oregon's long-established land use laws. In other words, Measure 37 would mandate a huge transfer of taxpayers money away from schools, police, and social services, and toward those who don't want to live within our laws. Incredibly, that $344 million is the estimated direct administrative cost of Measure 37 every year, according to the Financial Impact Statement for this ballot measure. Another term for "administrative cost" is "bureaucracy." That's right: if you vote for Measure 37, you're voting for a huge new layer of bureaucracy. More than 300 local governments and state agencies would be required to process claims from property owners, which would involve legal reviews, appraisals, and economic analyses of proposed developments. And all that is before paying even a single claim. The ballot summary states that costs to pay the actual claims against state and local governments "cannot be determined." It would undoubtedly be many hundreds of millions more. There's no doubt about it - Measure 37 could bankrupt Oregon. Ah, but the anti-land-use activists who drafted the proposal thoughtfully provided a way for the state to survive. The title of the measure, after all, reads "Governments must pay owners, or forego enforcement, when certain land use restrictions reduce property value." That's right, "forego enforcement." That's what this is really all about. The backers of Measure 37 know very well that our state could not pay all the costs and claims. Instead, we would have no choice but to let the developers do whatever they want, no matter how much that paves over farmland, creates sprawl, and destroys Oregon's quality of life. If Measure 37 passes, it's open season on Oregon . The list of Measure 37 opponents is a who's who of responsible civic groups in Oregon, from every part of the political spectrum. It ranges from the Oregon Business Association to the AFL-CIO, from the Nature Conservancy and the 1000 Friends of Oregon to the American Farmland Trust and the farm bureaus of counties all around the state. It includes the League of Women Voters, the Oregon PTA, the Oregon Mayor's Association, the American Cancer Society, and the Oregon Association for Retired Citizens. All these good people know that Measure 37 is a disaster waiting to happen. Please, join them and vote no on Measure 37. Pepper Trail is the conservation chair of the Rogue Valley Audubon Society. He lives in Ashland. DailyTidings.com Home Page Valley&State | Backpage | O&E | Sports | Archives | Weather | Classifieds Columnists | Faith&Beliefs | Obituaries | Revels | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2004 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Click Here Site Search: .:Advertisements:. RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams