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Friday, December 24, 2021
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Opinion
Editor & Publisher
Managing Editor
Joe Beach
Carl Sampson
opinions@capitalpress.com | CapitalPress.com/opinion
Our View
Sweeping mandates should come through legislation
T
he Oregon Environmental
Quality Commission last week
voted 3-to-1 for a sweeping
“Climate Protection Program” that
will require fuel suppliers in Oregon
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
from the products they sell 50% by
2035 and 90% by 2050.
It is the latest in a series of diktats
from an unelected bureaucracy that
will have wide-ranging impacts on
rural Oregon and raise costs for farm-
ers and ranchers.
In a statement criticizing the pro-
gram, the Oregon Farm Bureau said
the new program will raise the “costs
for the fuels, propane, and natural gas
our rural communities rely on to pro-
duce food and fiber as part of a global
food system.”
Trucking industry groups have esti-
mated the plan could double the price
of natural gas by 2050, add 36 cents
per gallon to the cost of gasoline and
add 39 cents per gallon to the price of
diesel by 2035.
Oregon Capital Insider
Oregon State Capitol
The regulators say that those fears
are overblown. DEQ predicts fuel
prices will increase no more than 3%
to 7% by 2050 because of the regula-
tions. It also says that if prices jump by
20% a review of the program will be
triggered that “could” result in changes
to the regulations.
So, no problem. The bureaucrats
have your back, and they could act if
prices jump too much.
We take issue with the way these
sweeping measures came into being.
The plan was developed by the
Department of Environmental Qual-
ity after Republican senators’ walk-
outs in 2019 and 2020 killed efforts to
pass economy-wide “cap and trade”
legislation.
After the walkouts, Gov. Kate
Brown outflanked the Republicans
with a far-reaching use of her execu-
tive powers to achieve the same gen-
eral goals. March of 2020, she signed
an executive order directing agencies
to craft a plan to regulate emissions.
A year and nine months later, com-
missioners voted to approve the new
rules.
Big programs that fundamentally
change the lives of millions of Orego-
nians should come from the legislature,
not unelected commissioners hand-
picked by the governor.
The cap and trade legislation pushed
by Brown and Democrat legislators has
been stymied by Republican senators
who have chosen to leave the chamber
and deny the Senate the necessary quo-
rum to do business. It is a cheap leg-
islative trick, but a nonetheless legiti-
Leaving the
farm — our last
Christmas there
Our View
T
Sierra Dawn McClain/Capital Press
Farmland near Forest Grove, Ore., where housing developments have been built. To slow the spread
of development, private property rights must be respected.
On protecting farmland
T
he good people of Idaho are em-
barking on an effort to “protect”
farmland. They want to stop — or at
least limit — the conversion of farmland to
other uses such as housing and commercial
developments.
Unbridled development is detrimental to
farming and ranching, where chemicals need
to be sprayed and livestock can create, shall
we say, “aromas” that new residential neigh-
bors may not appreciate. Just moving farm
equipment on local roads and highways can
create traffic slowdowns.
These and other factors set the stage for
conflict that everyone wants to avoid.
In a state growing as rapidly as Idaho,
that may be a tall order, so the Idaho Farm
Bureau Federation has joined with other
organizations in an attempt to establish a
means of protecting farmers, their liveli-
hoods and their farmland.
Especially in the region surrounding
Boise, where most of that growth is occur-
ring, farmland appears to be losing the bat-
tle. Development is sprawling across the
landscape in nearly every direction.
It’s gotten the point that some whole farm
operations have moved to more rural areas
of the state to escape.
Other states such as Oregon have faced
the same challenges. In varying degrees,
they have had success in protecting farmland
from wholesale development.
Oregon got into the business of protect-
ing farmland in 1973 when the legislature
passed the Oregon Land Use Act. It imposed
a batch of statewide goals for land use plan-
ning and farmland. One of the goals required
counties to designate exclusive farm use
land, which restricts many types of devel-
mate ploy available to a minority party.
During her days in the legislature,
Brown led such a walkout when her
party was in the minority.
Democrats pushing the bill have two
equally legitimate alternatives: make
amendments to the measure that would
make it more palatable to the minority,
or win enough elections to deny the
minority the power to block votes.
The legislative process in our rep-
resentative democracy is designed to
make change difficult. The founders
believed that doing nothing is prefera-
ble to doing the wrong thing, particu-
larly in haste.
Critics say the walkouts thwart the
democratic process. Elected represen-
tatives working in the interest of their
constituents seems far more demo-
cratic than a mandate imposed by an
unelected and unaccountable regula-
tory commission.
At the end of the day, the success of
a sweeping proposal should represent
the victory of an idea, not a process.
opment on it. Even with those protections, a
growing number of non-farm uses — about
60 at last count — have been allowed on
farmland.
These protections led to ballot measures
and legislative actions aimed at compensat-
ing farmers for lower fair market values of
property because of the land use regulations.
Those actions have not stopped the con-
version of farmland to other uses, but they
have certainly slowed the process.
Most recently, the legislature established
the Oregon Agricultural Trust, whose goal is
to protect farmland through “working land
easements” that limit the non-farm activities
and development that can take place on it.
Farmers can donate an easement pre-
venting development and get a tax credit or
cash and continue to own and farm the land.
By doing that, the property value is also
reduced, making the land more affordable
for the next generation of farmers.
Easements last forever, according to the
trust. That means a farm will stay a farm,
and a ranch will stay a ranch.
Any farmland preservation efforts must
balance the farm owner’s private prop-
erty rights against the desire to prevent the
wholesale development of farmland.
Seen in this light, Oregon’s Agricultural
Trust appears to do the best job of address-
ing both of those concerns, and it does it
without overlaying the entire state with
a cumbersome government-run land use
system.
In our opinion — and we hope Idaho’s
farm community will agree — the best sys-
tem for protecting farmland will include a
minimum of state regulations and a maxi-
mum respect for private property rights.
his Christmas we will cel-
ebrate at The Farm for the
last time. The property is in
probate, which will force its sale, a
casualty of Oregon’s land use laws
(SB 1, which labels the land exclu-
sive farm use, and prevents its sub-
division or an additional house).
My wife Susan’s parents bought
the 1906 farmhouse in 1960, and
she grew up there. We moved to
the property in 1990, raised our
three children near their grand-
parents, did farming (hay, cattle,
ponies, pigs, chickens, pumpkins,
quail), and ran my law practice
there. Bringing in the hay in sum-
mer was a big family event.
The Farm is about 50 acres, and
a river runs through it. The Molalla
River is one of Oregon’s magi-
cal streams. Only 50 miles long, it
arises in the Cascade foothills in
wilderness at Table Rock, runs as
a wild and scenic river in its upper
reaches above Molalla, and ends in
a state park in the Willamette River
with a bald eagle nest and heron
rookery. In the floodplain, it flows
around the south end of bluff-pro-
tected Canby and through The
Farm.
It is rich in wildlife, from cou-
gar to pika, with diminished num-
bers of eels, steelhead and salmon.
Years ago there was a smelt run.
Along its banks, and on The
Farm, we have found over 140
bird species and over 40 mam-
mals: mergansers, dippers, harle-
quin ducks, five owl species, mink,
otter and beaver. Osprey nests and
five species of swallows use its
farms, bridges and banks.
In winter, huge flocks of Can-
ada Geese fly and cry overhead.
The cries of kildeer arise from its
morning fields, blackbirds from the
hedges, and sandhill cranes from
overhead. Upriver, from Good’s
Bridge, the golden or silver light
from sun and moon traces in a path
along the side of Mt. Hood and
down the river to our very feet.
The Farm has been paradise
for raising our three children, and
summer camp for their friends,
although not without problems
deriving from public access. We
have swum with salmon, trout and
garter snakes, caught crawfish and
floated downriver by canoe, kayak,
inner tube and body surfing.
The river floods dramatically,
but quickly subsides. In summer
one must walk, and mallards bump
their bottoms while crossing.
Why is this of interest to Cap-
ital Press readers? Another farm
gone, but helped by state regu-
lation. We are just outside Can-
by’s Urban Growth Boundary,
which has led to superb farmland
in the city being turned into tract
housing.
Meanwhile, marginal farm-
land outside the UGB cannot be
subdivided or built upon. The per-
verse result is the opposite of the
GUEST
VIEW
Alan L.
Gallagher
supposed intent of Oregon’s land
use laws, designed to protect farm
property. Canby has turned from
a small farm town of under 2,000
into a 20,000-plus bedroom com-
munity for Portland. Those who
came to Canby for its rural atmo-
sphere have, newcomer by new-
comer, destroyed it.
To paraphrase the song, “They
took paradise and put up a parking
lot.” It used to be that they let chil-
dren off school early to work on
the farms. Now they take school
children to boutique farms to see
what a farm looks like.
I was a farm boy as a child,
growing up on working farms in
western Pennsylvania. We fed the
cows and pigs, the ducks and poul-
try, shucked corn, dug potatoes and
harvested apples from the trees.
As a lawyer, I represented
farmers, farm laborers and con-
tractors. I did timber exchanges in
the Columbia Gorge. I lived the
life of Robert Frost’s characters,
such as the boy in “Birches,” and
learned from the Greeks, from
Horace, and from Thomas Jeffer-
son that farmers are the backbone
of democracy.
Susan’s family were farmers
from the Rhineland, who went to
the Ukraine at Catherine’s invita-
tion, fled Russia later and came to
the Dakotas. The Depression and
Dust Bowl drove them to Missouri
and then to Oregon.
I am age 79, a retired lawyer,
manager and university profes-
sor, beset with medical problems.
Inflation has driven up land prices,
so that we cannot afford our mil-
lion-dollar option to remain, and
other heirs want cashed out, about
which we litigate.
As in Dickens’ “Bleak House,”
lawyers are eating up the property
value. We now have a small place
in the city. As I leave the truly
important 1%, perhaps, like Cal-
ifornia’s Victor Davis Hanson —
farmer, professor, classicist, author
of “Mexifornia” and “The Dying
Citizen” — I can share the wisdom
that comes of connection with the
earth and its products.
Farmers know we depend upon
nature and energy, from proper use
of the land and natural resources,
not from utopian rejection of
nature.
A strong middle class made our
country, citizens responsible to the
land, who celebrate its wise use.
“Good citizens are the riches of a
city.”
Alan L. Gallagher is a farmer
and lawyer. He lives in Canby,
Ore.