Measure 37 restores owners' rights.

Byline: GUEST VIEWPOINT By Ginny Paseman For The Register-Guard

After reading the Jan. 25 guest viewpoint by Bob Stacey of 1000 Friends of Oregon about Measure 37, I would like to give a rural landowner's viewpoint on how Oregon's land use planning system came about and why Measure 37 passed with 60 percent of the vote.

Thirty years ago, each county held public meetings at which rural folks were introduced to the radical new concept of zoning and control of all rural property in Oregon. In Coos County, where I lived at the time, we attended all of the meetings and were told we could sign up to be placed in whatever zone we liked. We were told that this new plan wouldn't hurt us - it would protect us.

We were deceived. When our comprehensive plan was completed, many of us discovered we were placed in zones that were totally different from our initial choices. What we wanted was inconsistent with what the state wanted for us.

Stacey's column described "public meetings and hearings to create our statewide planning goals." These meetings were a total farce. At every meeting, we were threatened: "You don't want a slaughterhouse or a pig farm next to your property, do you?" Or: "If we don't zone ourselves, the state will do it for us."

In spite of the threats, when we got a chance to vote, Coos County turned down this so-called planning - as did most other rural counties in Oregon. In fact, we voted three times statewide. But each time, voters in the Portland and Eugene areas carried the day. (I remember commercials showing a beautiful McKenzie River scene, and then a second scene showing ugly smokestacks and pollution, with the caption, "You don't want the McKenzie to turn into this!")

In truth, the city dwellers decided what we rural folks could do with our property - which was not much. Those owning 40 acres, 100 acres, 260 acres and more were allowed only their existing home, with no hope of having their kids live next to them in the future. Some acreages could never have even one dwelling. Wills that had been written deeding parcels of land to heirs were thrown in the toilet. Most land was designated "forest only" or "farming only," regardless of the soil type or the terrain. But Big Brother had spoken, and those of us in the rural area had to knuckle under.

Stacey's argument that Measure 37 "lets privileged property owners turn back the clock to demand payment or immunity from the zoning safeguards on which neighbors and the rest of us depend" unnerved me the most. You bet we want the clock turned back. We aren't "privileged!" We only want the rules to be what they were when we bought the land. The 1000 Friends of Oregon didn't help pay for my land or help pay my taxes. Why does this group think it has a right to decide what can or can't be done with thousands of acres that it has no part in?

For that matter, landowners may ask for relief only if they owned the land at the time the planning was adopted, which in many cases was 30 years ago. That takes care of any Johnny-come-lately land developers.

If Oregon is such a utopia because of its omnipotent planning, why is it that no other state in the past 30 years has adopted and copied Oregon's land use planning system? It's because it is too restrictive. It goes against our constitutional rights of property.

Property rights are what made our nation great. The freedom to manage your own land is a basic right that control freaks just don't seem to understand. They just don't seem to get that we don't want to be stacked like cordwood inside city limits, all thinking the same politically correct thoughts.

So now, those same control freaks want the Legislature to change Measure 37 and make it impotent. Some cities have attached outrageous fees to requests from owners who want to get relief from Measure 37. Well, now, I don't remember any fees given landowners when the state came in and took our God-given rights away from us.

We - as a state, and as a people - have had to live under state control of our property. We have seen our logging industry taken away, leaving us with no jobs, no school tax base and budget shortfalls. We are seeing wolves coming into our state that will destroy our ranching and our elk and deer herds, with no power to protect ourselves. (Check out what has happened in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho). We saw farmers go bankrupt in the Klamath Basin because of people who thought more of a sucker fish than they did of humans.

I firmly believe if the state tries to mess with Measure 37, it is going to have a lot of people to reckon with. I think it's time to take back our state and restore some of the rights that have been stripped from us.

Ginny Paseman of Culp Creek was a rural landowner who participated in Coos County's early land use planning debates.