Oregon Land-Use Regulations Debated -- Group Sues State Over Development

OREGON CITY, Ore. - Foes and backers of Oregon's land-use program have verbally sparred over whether the 17-year effort has lost its way.

Critics of land-use planning, including Maurice Holland, dean of the University of Oregon School of Law, said the program has eroded private property rights and cost the state economic opportunity.

Proponents said that, although land-use regulation lost momentum and political support during the recession of the early 1980s, the program is back on track and more important than ever in a period of population growth.

A land-use conference sponsored by the property-rights group Oregonians in Action drew both sides Saturday.

The Land Conservation and Development Commission, which oversees statewide land-use planning, has been taken to court by Oregonians in Action. The group opposes new rules restricting residential development on forest land.

Holland, who said he is no expert on Oregon land-use law, called enactment of statewide land-use planning ``a product of a spasm of anti-development fever that seems to have overtaken Oregon in the early 1970s.''

In the years since, he said, many Oregonians have questioned why the state's economy is so fragile without realizing that land-use restrictions were part of the reason for economic stagnation.

``If this continues, in 10 years we'll have an economy like Albania's,'' he said.

Deschutes County Commissioner Tom Throop, a commission member, defended land-use planning although he said the program is strapped for resources and ``not perfect.''

``Oregonians in Action read the public pulse accurately when it decided not to put a measure on the ballot to do away with land-use planning,'' Throop said.

``The reality is that land-use planning is here to stay.''

Linn County farmer Hector MacPherson, a former state senator who sponsored the 1973 law establishing statewide land-use planning, said the program has been most effective and least controversial in controlling suburban encroachment on fertile farmland.

Bill Moshofsky, attorney for Oregonians in Action, said that preservation of prime agricultural land, a fundamental principle of Oregon land-use planning, is obsolete in an era of agricultural commodity surpluses.

Moshofsky said Oregon farmers were paid $25 million not to grow crops on more than 500,000 acres last year, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture has estimated that the nation will need 43 percent less crop land by the year 2030.