Update: We now know that change.org is requesting contributions. Those contributions are to help change.org share this petition, but are not coming to Aaron Nichols or any organizations working on this bill.
Dear Oregon Senators, Representatives, and Governor Tina Kotek,We are farmers, eaters, citizens and lovers of Oregon's working and wild spaces and we urge you to protect our lands strip sections 10 and 11 from SB 4 and reject the -3 and all other amendments that damage our land use system.
We reject the false choice between having our land use protections, high quality farmland, scenic and working lands and having new high tech jobs in Oregon. Many cities and municipalities have saved industrial land just for this purpose, they are more appropriate, more ready, and more attractive than large sections of rural land outside the UGB. We don't need to irrevocably harm the system that has made Oregon what it is, that has given us better outcomes than our neighboring states, that has brought many high tech and other workers to our state, when the system is working as it should. We should take the win and site new high tech industrial sites in the areas that have already been studied, identified, and invested in as best for industrial uses.
We reject the high stakes gambling with Oregon's tax dollars, Oregon's way of life, and Oregon's second biggest industry- agriculture. This bill offers no certainty that Oregon will receive a new semiconductor fab or other major high tech investment. Many states are bidding and there are only so many new fabs to be built. This bill may well leave us with hundreds of millions spent from our rainy day fund on corporate tax breaks, the loss of large tracts of the very best farmland we have remaining, unknown consequences on the agricultural industry as a whole, and huge uncertainty in our rural communities about the future of the working land they depend on in exchange for sprawl, data centers, light industrial production, and commercial real estate.
We reject the legislatures breaking faith with our land use agreements, our local governments, and its constituents. The metro area underwent a major planning process to designate urban and rural reserves about one decade into. This bill upends the agreements and irrevocably undermines the trust and hard work that went into making them. Hundreds of professionals looked at hundreds of factors over years with public comment open to everyone and real attempts to consider the wishes of those most affected. This bill assumes that a single committee can, in a few weeks, do a better job despite not seeking public comment, not considering a fraction of the issues involved, and not consulting with real professionals on land use, water use, or soils.
We reject the undemocratic idea that a single person should decide the fates of small businesses, land owners, and the public at large by being given a "magic wand" to make land use decisions with little public input and very limited appeal. This bill gives the governor the power to unilaterally move land into the UGB and limits appeals to law suits filed in 60 days and cuts out Oregon's experts on land use in the DLCD and Land Use Court of Appeals. That is not par for the course in Oregon nor is it a representative and democratic system.
We reject the inequitable process and guaranteed inequitable outcomes that would be ushered in by this bill. By giving the power to bring land into the UGB, the governor and she alone will have the ability to make some land (and not others) 10-100 times as valuable as it is under current land use. She, and she alone, will have the ability to allow some developers (and not others) to pursue large scale projects on land closed to other development. She, and she alone, will have the power to destroy some small and midsized rural and agricultural businesses (but not others) by including their land or lands near by in the UGB with virtually no process and mere months to prepare. She, and she alone, will have the power to allow corporations to concentrate their wealth in some communities (and not others) by adding land in some places and letting industrial land in others sit vacant. This system will inevitably benefit those who have the most power, the most connections, and the most money and it will, inevitably, leave out those unconnected, undeserved, and under-represented.
We reject scrambling for short term gains and losing site of the long term needs of our communities. We reject the expansion of UBGs at the cost of the very farmland we will need to grow food and the other agricultural products we depend on. We reject the climate denialism that assumes what we need are a few jobs now and not resilient landscapes in the future.
For all these reasons, for the protection of the best farmland in Oregon, for the sake of the land use laws that have brought us to the Oregon we love today and for the sake of the land that will feed and care for the Oregonians of the future, we urge you to strip the dangerous land use provisions for SB 4 and pass a CHIPS bill that is really about bringing industry to an Oregon we can all live in.
Written on the 10th of March, 2023.
