Voter Initiative 933

[catbirdseat]

As climbers and citizens you have an interest in this initiative. It would require the government to pay a land owner any time a land-use regulation affects the value of his land. Because the government does not have the resources to pay off the billions of dollars that would be required, cities and counties would have to gut their zoning laws and other land use regulations to avoid the payouts.

 

The result would be little to no regulation of land use. There would be a great deal of negative environmental consequences.

 

VOTE NO on 933!

 

Here is the text of the initiative in PDF format.

Edited September 27, 2006 by catbirdseat

[hawkeye69]

just curious.

 

your telling me that if i own a piece of land and the government zones it so it costs me a million $, that is OK?

 

shold the government be able to tell private landowners what they can do with their land even though it costs the landowner money?

 

what happens if i own 5 acres with a house on it and they decide to zone it commercially and i can't live there anymore? do i have to sell it to corporate america?

 

just curious. seems like the landowner can get screwed here for the betterment of society, the good of mankind and all that. of course our government is just looking out for the betterment of mankind and all that...

[catbirdseat]

You elect government representatives to make land use regulations that are in the best interest of the citizens as a group. Sometimes those regulations cost individuals money. Zoning laws are a relatively new phenomena. On the whole, they have made our cities better places to live.

 

933 Opposed by Nature Conservancy

Edited September 27, 2006 by catbirdseat

[slothrop]

How can a zoning decision cost a landowner money? When property taxes go up? Missed opportunity for subdividing and selling to a developer is not "lost" money.

 

The recent court decision affirming local governments' eminent domain powers seems to say that they wouldn't have to go through the trouble of rezoning your land to kick you off. They just take it.

 

Who decides the value of the land? County assessor? If so, then wouldn't this initiative just be an incentive for the gov't to undervalue your land? Seems like everyone loses in this scenario: less land value for the owner, less property tax for the gov't.

[selkirk]

small landowners can always get screwed for the betterment of society. I think the real potential abuse of this lies in commercial developers.

i.e. You sell your 5 acres that's zoned residential/rural to a developer who decides he should be able to put in a strip mall. The law could be interpreted that the state now has to pay the developer to not to develop the land

 

Have an environmental lawyer friend who works for the state who said that 933 as it's written is convoluted, vague, and very abusable. The not changing or enacting new laws without due process and potential remuneration for damage to property or usability isn't so bad but...

 

from the bill

"An agency that decides to enforce or apply any ordinance, regulation, or rule to private property that would result damaging the use or value of private property shall first pay the property owner compensation as defined in section of this act. This section shall not be construed to limit agencies' ability to waive, or issue variances from, other legal requirements. An agency that chooses not to take action which will damage the use or value of private property is not liable for paying remuneration under this section."

 

I think this clause is the sticky point. The state would have to pay people to enfoce existing laws and statutes, or waive the statutes.

 

So.... how would you like to have the state pay an Exxon not to have a fueld depot next to your house in a residential zone?

 

Thinly veiled corporate greed clause

[slothrop]

Ugh. That's blackmail.

 

A similar law passed in Oregon a while back, I heard on NPR. Apparently, a bunch of lawsuits are in the works and the impact hasn't been visible yet, but many of the suits are regarding nasty-sounding development projects.

[catbirdseat]

Where's Fairweather?

[Winter]

Hey guys, I live here in Oregon and am working on several law suits regarding Measure 37, which is Oregon's equivalent. Both 933 and M37 are written very poorly and result in incredibly difficult problems of application and interpretation. If a more reasonable compromise had been worked out by the private property folks, then a limited number of people could actually have moved forward with rasonable projects (such as a single family dwelling on farm land). As it stands now, they reached too far and ended up with a law that is so confusing and difficult to apply that no bank will fund any of these projects.

 

You can't just reverse hundreds of years of American political theory by suddenly deciding the government has to compensate people for every exercise of its regulatory power that results in some financial consequence. How the hell would we ever regulate anything?

[mattp]

just curious. seems like the landowner can get screwed here for the betterment of society, the good of mankind and all that.

 

Yup. That is the unfortunate downside of regulation. As they said in communist Russia: "if you want to make an omlette you have to break some eggs."

 

But concerns for individual property rights should argue in favoer of paying attention to elections and holding public officials accountable and maybe tweaking the system so that it is not so much tilted in favor of developers - not for abandoning the concept of land use regulation.