Governor and State Legislature trying to head off land use initiative

As reported here, there are some bills being floated to try to head off the land use initiative that the Farm Bureau has been putting together, that I blogged about here, so as to not allow an Oregon Measure 37 type of thing to happen here. Oregon's Measure 37, which was passed overwhelmingly, requires governments to compensate land owners for lowered property values due to regulatory restrictions, or allow the property owners to develop their property.

The fear in Olympia is, if the Farm Bureau's initiative gets on the ballot and passes, that the state's growth management act would effectively be done away with, leading to unrestricted growth. They also don't want to have to compensate land owners for lower property values through land use restrictions. Of course, the various conservation groups active in the state are also against the proposed Farm Bureau initiative - in whatever form it eventually takes - making the claim that "sensitive areas" would be destroyed by "out of control development".

The state Growth Management Act, while based on "good intentions", has usurped the rights of land owners in having a say in what they can do with their own property. The recently passed King County Critical Areas Ordinance went even farther, by restricting what land owners can do with their property, by putting up to 65% of their property "off limits" to development of any kind - even making your lawn bigger - without any form of compensation to the affected land owner, whatsoever! That's like telling someone who owns a car that they can only use it on Tuesday's, Thursday's, and part of Saturday, but the rest of the week, they can't even get in it let alone drive it, while still having to pay for full coverage insurance, as well as the loan on the car itself!

It comes down to a matter of trust, with the state and local governments saying that they don't trust the property owners to do what is right with their property, and that only the government knows what's right. Well, I have a lot more trust in the individual property owners sense of what they should, or shouldn't, do with their own property, than I do in the governments ability to know what is right.

As for the conservation groups over the top fears go, I also have a lot more trust in the sense of property owners knowing what would be proper use of their property. I don't own property myself at the moment (but I do plan on it at some point), but I do know several people that do own property, and I can vouch for their sensibility when it comes to knowing what is good - and bad - use of their property. Not one of them wants to turn their property into an eyesore, or into something that is detrimental to their neighbors or the environment, yet the conservation groups all want the ability of the property owners to determine what they can, and cannot, do with their own land to be controlled not by the property owners themselves, but by the "nanny state" government, so that the big, bad, property owners won't be tempted into "out of control development".