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Afterwards, the lights rose and Robert Liberty, the bearded and tweed-wearing executive director of 1000 Friends, stood before the audience. He warned of an enemy that threatened to destroy the Oregon they all loved. Former Gov. Tom McCall's 27-year-old legacy of land-use planning was in danger because of Ballot Measures 2 and 7, which, if passed, would turn Portland into Anytown, USA. Defeating the measures would take money -- and a lot of it. On cue, like ushers in a church, volunteers moved through the rows of the theater, handing out envelopes for donations. After such a sermon, it seemed inconceivable that Oregon voters would overturn the very thing that makes Oregon different. On Nov. 7, Ballot Measure 2, which would have allowed people dissatisfied with state agency rules to call for a legislative review, failed. But the so-called takings initiative, Measure 7, passed 53 to 47 percent. In rural counties, the spread was even more stunning. Places like Grants Pass, Powell Butte and Heppner not only passed the measure, they hit it out of the electoral ballpark. Up to 69 percent of the voters there said that if the government takes any part of their land, the government ought to pay for it. The constitutional amendment failed only in the urban counties along the Interstate 5 corridor. Measure 7 seems like a simple tit for tat, but it isn't. While both the federal and Oregon constitutions require compensation when the government wholly condemns or takes property, to date courts have ruled that a "partial taking" requires no payment to landowners. In every city in America, zoning laws and property regulations help write the civic contract. In Oregon, such rules have taken on a religious import, based on the land-use tenets set in stone by former Gov. Tom McCall. In 1973, the Republican governor convinced a Democratic Legislature to pass his vision of protecting farmlands, creating open spaces and planning livable, walkable cities. Over the past quarter-century, this vision has defined Oregon more than the rain. Yet on Nov. 7, Oregon voters proved that nothing is sacred. James Huffman is the dean of the Northwestern School of Law at Lewis & Clark College. He has written extensively about what he considers unfair partial-takings laws. He often butts heads with his more liberal colleagues at the law school, and he supports the concept of Measure 7. Nevertheless, he was shocked that it passed.
"It's really amazing to me that it happened here in Oregon, of all places," Huffman says. "To really go beyond what any court now says is the constitutional requirement, I find remarkable." While most of the attention during the election was focused on Bill Sizemore's anti-tax, anti-union and anti-teacher initiatives, they all failed. Measure 7 was the sleeper, brought to the ballot by a pair of down-home property-rights zealots that few people had heard of. Yet Measure 7 could ultimately have a greater impact on the state than anything Sizemore ever dreamed up. In a nondescript Tigard office building, David Hunnicutt leans back in a battered office chair. He is the director of legal affairs for Oregonians in Action (OIA), the group that pushed Measure 7. Hunnicutt is suited up, looking like the lawyer he is, except for his hair, which is buzz-cut survivalist-style. At 35, what's left on his head has gone ghostly silver. Next to him, Larry George snacks on chocolate-covered hazelnuts. He looks relaxed, in jeans and a pinkish Ralph Lauren shirt. The two come off more like Oregon college buddies than renegades. "I'm from St. Helens and Larry came from Newberg," Hunnicutt smiles. "We're just good old boys from small-town Oregon." OIA has but one purpose, according to George and Hunnicutt: to unlock the hold that special interests have over private property -- especially on the land outside of urban areas, which they believe has been incorrectly zoned for farm and forest use just so city folk can have a pretty view when they drive in the country. Their conversations are peppered with class-warfare rhetoric. "Our unofficial motto," George jokes, "is that we're here to protect anyone who is getting screwed by the system, by the Man." To OIA, the Man includes big government, big corporations and 1000 Friends of Oregon, their most direct opponent in the land-use wars. 1000 Friends, which McCall established in 1975 to watch over the planning system he created with Senate Bill 100, epitomizes the urban-liberal dominance over state affairs, according to George. "We view ourselves as populist libertarians," he says, "and view 1000 Friends as a bunch of blue-blood elitists who want to tell everyone else how to live." Liberty says that's baloney -- that the Friends have more than 5,000 members in every corner of Oregon. The reality, he says, based on the group's history, is that OIA is a fringe group that got lucky with Measure 7. "They are a right-wing, property-rights organization that is unrepresentative of Oregonians and their quality of life," Liberty says. For the past decade, OIA has slowly been building a base of grassroots property-rights activists who agree with George, not Liberty. George joined OIA as executive director in 1992. Son of Sen. Gary George of Newberg, one of the few ultra-conservatives left in Salem, George the younger was raised on politics and farming. A graduate of Oregon State University, he worked briefly in California in food inspection for Smucker's before coming back home at 23 to join OIA.
Where George is the back-slapping politician, Hunnicutt is more reticent. A self-described St. Helens labor Democrat, he says he provides a balance to George's right-wing tendencies. Hunnicutt earned a law degree from Lewis & Clark and went into practice with his father for a few years. He joined OIA after he began representing landowners and became convinced that the government was taking advantage of them. "OIA was the only group I'd come across that was fighting for landowners," he says. In 1994, the group made its name after winning Dolan vs. City of Tigard, a case that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. John and Florence Dolan, who own A-Boy Plumbing in Tigard, applied for a permit to expand their store. The city said they would have to create a public bike path on their property to get the permit. The Dolans sued, with the assistance of OIA, and eventually prevailed, winning $1.5 million. In the past 10 years, OIA has represented, always at no charge, numerous landowners who have been thwarted in their attempts to develop their property. Beyond the courts, OIA has dabbled in fighting the Endangered Species Act and last year distributed the infamous "salmon-bashing" video that was shot at an Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife hatchery. The group also used the bloody footage in a series of television commercials paid for by eccentric millionaire Loren Parks. Today, the group claims a supporter list of more than 6,000 people and an annual budget of around $450,000. OIA has been slowly building influence at the state level. In 1995, OIA passed a regulatory takings law similar to Measure 7 that was vetoed by the governor. In 1998, they passed Ballot Measure 56, which requires the government to notify property owners of any proposed rezoning. The measure also requires that the government include a statement that the rezoning "may" reduce the value of the property -- even if it's a rezoning that could increase the value. Critics point out, however, that OIA has yet to exercise any serious clout. For three sessions it has failed to move its most important agenda -- loosening the strict farm and forest-land zoning on rural lands. One of OIA's bills would create a set of "secondary" lands that OIA deems unfit for farming or logging. The second fights mandatory income requirements that limit housing on some farm and timber land. OIA's work puts it at odds not only with 1000 Friends of Oregon but with the Oregon Farm Bureau. Still, Jon Chandler, lobbyist for the Oregon Homebuilders Association and a frequent OIA ally, says the group shouldn't be dismissed. "They've passed ballot measures, they're in the courts, they're in the political process," Chandler says. "They're not backing away from any fights they can get their hands on." Still, Hunnicutt and George were not prepared for the biggest fight of their careers -- pushing Measure 7. It wasn't even their idea. Measure 7 is the creation of Becky and Stuart Miller, who have been longtime foot soldiers for Bill Sizemore. The two of them penned Measure 7 after an environmental overlay was placed on their land near Fanno Creek. Whether intentionally or not, the measure attacks land use in a different way than unsuccessful prior attempts. Measure 7 says nothing about overturning regulations. Instead, it simply mandates that governments pay whenever a change affects a property's value. Earlier this year, Oregon Taxpayers United began circulating petitions for the measure along with Sizemore's other initiatives, but OIA saw this as trespassing. "We've been working in land use for more than 10 years," says George. "This was our issue, and one that is very important to our supporters." After some behind-the-scenes grappling between OTU and OIA, Sizemore handed the measure over once he had collected most of the signatures. Measure 7 was a risk to OIA. The group didn't have the funds to mount two full-on ballot measure campaigns, and it had already committed to Measure 2. In the end, Measure 2 fell by the wayside. "Explaining administrative rules to the public takes more money than we have," Hunnicutt says. For the Measure 7 campaign, OIA raised and spent almost $450,000, largely on radio ads that featured land-use planning "victims." In addition, Becky Miller of Oregon Taxpayers United had her own political action committee that raised, at last reporting, more than $365,000. George created a second political action committee that solicited donations from developer Robert Randall and Eugene timber baron Aaron Jones to publish a $300,000 "voter's guide." This four-color brochure, which failed to indicate who was paying for it, offered opinions on a number of ballot measures under the guise of objectivity. Mailed to most homes in Oregon, the brochure had a profound effect. Polling shows that support for Measure 7 continually eroded during the campaign until the day the brochure hit. It still baffles many that Measure 7 passed at all. No one endorsed it. The Association of Realtors, a longtime friend of OIA, stayed neutral, as did Oregon Homebuilders Association. The Oregon Farm Bureau was against it, as were all the major political, environmental and activist organizations in the state. The opposition, organized by 1000 Friends of Oregon, spent $1.7 million, which may seem like a lot, but is not much compared to the more than $8 million spent to fight Sizemore's measures. Still, the No on 2 and 7 campaign ran hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of television ads. Measure 7 was opposed by nearly every newspaper in the state as well as Gov. John Kitzhaber. In an emotional press conference, 85-year-old Audrey McCall asked the voters not to throw away her husband's legacy. Caroline Fitchett, who ran the No on 2 and 7 campaign for 1000 Friends, acknowledges that few thought the measure would pass and as a consequence, forces that would be typically energized to oppose this measure were instead focusing their efforts against Sizemore. "In the last week of the campaign," she says, "people became aware that this thing could win. There were farmers, activists, teachers and elected officials from around the state calling and e-mailing with offers to help." In the last week, Fitchett says, more than $200,000 was collected. "If that would have happened 10 days earlier, if we had had even another week," she says, "we would have won." Today, lawyers, politicians and even OIA are trying to sort out exactly what Measure 7 portends. Liberty repeatedly points out that the voters were voting on a ballot title that mentioned nothing about land-use planning. In fact, polling shows that Oregonians are still enthusiastically behind the current land-use system. "I don't know what the voters wanted," he says. "We don't know if they wanted to overturn land-use planning in the state."
Others are suggesting that there is a lesson to be learned, that the signs of a voter backlash against land-use planning have been in place for years. Henry Richmond, the first director of 1000 Friends, says the voters of this state have taken planning for granted. "It was just a matter of time before someone knocked the Oregon land-use plan out of the box," he says. "I think there is a very thin level of understanding of the way many different interests in society are affected and helped by land-use planning." Others say the voters very clearly understand the effects and they don't like it. For decades, rural Oregon has felt the brunt of environmental regulations. Critics have often made a connection between these rules and the decline in the state's resource-based economy, whether or not this is a fair conclusion. In addition, the split between urban and rural sensibilities continues to grow. Travel anywhere outside an urban growth boundary and you'll hear grumbling about how, on one hand, small forest-land owners have to let timber rot in order to provide buffer zones along streams to protect salmon, but on the other hand, the city continues to dump its sewage into the Willamette every time it rains. "I believe there are an awful lot of folks who believe that government regulation considers public interest paramount over landowners," says state Sen. Ted Ferrioli, who represents Gresham and points east. "They believe the government has grown too fast and is inequitably administered over urban and rural areas." Outgoing Metro Council member Jon Kvistad says Measure 7 is a wake-up call. "If we don't listen to that voice of frustration out there," he says, "I think we're going to lose it all. This is just the first salvo, and if we don't listen, groups like OIA will be more successful and we could see cracks in Oregon's land-use law that could become fissures." Patty Wentz can be reached at pwentz@wweek.com
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