Oregon Plans: The Making of an Unquiet Land Use Revolution

Chapter 8: Governor Straub, the 1975 Legislature, and LCDC

169 Chapter 8 Governor Straub, the 1975 Legislature, and LCDC “[T]he Legislature must decide whether it wants to make the down payment for Oregon’s future envisioned in SB 100 . . . or whether controlled, sane land use development is worthy of rhetoric, but not dollars . . . Unless this agency is given the resources now to prove itself, Oregon will have lost a priceless chance to come to grips with its future.”—The Oregonian, Portland adopting the statewide planning goals was a remarkable achievement—a first in the nation—but implementing the commission’s program depended on the legislature’s willingness to provide adequate funds to the department of Land Conservation and development. in 1975, the Land Conservation and development Commission faced a make-or-break legislative session. Passing its biennial budget was the key, but it was a tough time for the state economy, with unemployment at its highest level since 1950 (Federman, 1975). LCdC needed funding to enable dLCd to complete important work that it had been unable to accomplish in 1973-1975 and to support local governments as they revised their plans and ordinances to comply with statewide planning goals. Without a substantial financial commitment from the state—the situation in 1969 after passage of Sb 10—the dynamics set in motion by Sb 100 would grind to a halt. Still, land-use advocates were hopeful. For the first time in the twentieth century, democrats controlled both houses of the Oregon legislature and held the governor’s office. almost one-third of the legislators were freshmen, and many supported land-use planning and environmental initiatives. industry representatives, environmental activists, and legislative leaders sponsored numerous competing bills aimed at shaping the implementation 170 oregon Plans of the land-use program. in the months before the session, LCdC sent several ideas to the Joint Legislative Committee on Land Use and to Janet McLennan, governor Straub’s adviser on land-use and natural-resource issues. McLennan, a Portland attorney, had staffed the house Environment and Land Use Committee in the 1973 session and had worked closely with Straub on environmental matters (Cogan, 1974f; Schell, 1974c). Cities and counties pushed for more autonomy and for as many dollars to support their work as they could get. the Oregon Environmental Council (OEC) and Oregon Shores sought new legislation to overcome what they saw as weaknesses in Sb 100 and the LCdC-adopted goals. the state homebuilders association, Oregon association of realtors (Oar), associated Oregon industries (aOi), and other business groups lobbied to rein in what they thought was an excessively powerful state agency and to make some basic changes in Sb 100. the Joint Legislative Committee addressed several issues that had been contested in the 1973 session and during goal development in 1974, including compensatory zoning, the coordination of the work of LCdC and the Oregon department of Environmental Quality, and the continuing challenge of persuading county tax assessors to take seriously the significance of exclusive farm-use zones for property taxation. the Oregon Supreme Court rendered a land-use decision in 1975 that roiled the political waters, and LCdC adopted a Willamette river greenway goal, its fifteenth. The DLCD Budget during the 1974 gubernatorial campaign, bob Straub strongly supported the statewide land-use program and other environmental initiatives that had been put in place during the McCall years. his platform included support for designating areas and activities of critical statewide concern and increasing the protection of farmland. as a state senator from Eugene in the early 1960s, Straub had sponsored farmland zoning legislation, and as state treasurer he had played a leadership role on coastal resource protection and Willamette river cleanup and recreational development. given the troubled state of the Oregon economy, however, Straub also had campaigned in support of economic growth that would bring jobs to all parts of the state. Overall, he presented his platform as a balanced approach to conservation and development. governor strauB, the 1975 legislature, and lcdc 171 One of the people who worked most closely on Straub’s budget was John Mosser, who had chaired the bob Straub for governor Committee and was now a general adviser to the governor. Mosser was a Portland attorney and former republican legislator who had become an independent, and governor McCall had appointed him to direct the Executive department . he had also chaired the State Sanitary authority, the predecessor to the Environmental Quality Commission. Mosser worked with Stafford hansell...