State
Blue Mountain Eagle
Wednesday, April 11, 2018
A9
Ruling makes it easier to rebuild houses on farmland
Previous legal
interpretation
required taxation
within five years
By Mateusz Perkowski
Capital Bureau
Dwellings can be rebuilt
on Oregon farmland regard-
less of when the original
structures were destroyed or
removed, according to the Or-
egon Court of Appeals.
The ruling overturns an
earlier interpretation of state
law by Oregon’s Land Use
Board of Appeals, which held
that dwellings can only be
rebuilt if they were subject
to property taxes within the
past five years. It will make it
easier for homes to be built on
farm parcels.
Landwatch Lane County, a
farmland preservation group,
argues that the Oregon Court
of Appeals has misconstrued
the pertinent land use statute,
creating an “end run” around
the state planning goal of pre-
serving farmland.
“I would call it devastat-
ing for Oregon farmland,”
said Lauri Segel-Vaccher, the
group’s legal analyst.
Long-lost homes could be
rebuilt on farmland regardless
of soil quality and with uncer-
tain proof they existed in the
first place, she said.
Counties are often “lack-
adaisical” in protecting farm
and forestland, so they may
require only scant evidence
of a dwelling’s location, Se-
gel-Vaccher said.
“Anybody could come up
with a photograph or a diary
entry from the 1800s,” she
said.
Landwatch Lane County
hasn’t yet decided whether to
challenge the decision before
the Oregon Supreme Court,
Segel-Vaccher said.
Oregonians In Action, a
property rights group, be-
lieves state lawmakers were
“fully informed” of the effect
their revisions would have on
the applicable land use statute
in 2013.
“The whole purpose of
the bill was to allow property
owners to replace dwellings
that had been removed, in
some cases, decades earli-
er,” said Dave Hunnicutt, the
group’s executive director.
The notion that a signif-
icant number of homes will
be built as a result is “silly”
because landowners must still
demonstrate the existence of a
dwelling, he said.
“Most rural land is on par-
cels that have never had farm
dwellings,” said Hunnicutt.
The legal dispute over re-
placement farmland dwellings
stems from the case of a land-
owner who sought to rebuild
three houses on 100 acres of
farmland near Florence that
were torn down more than
two decades ago.
Lane County officials per-
mitted the construction based
on a 2013 bill that eased the
replacement process for di-
lapidated or demolished farm
dwellings.
However, the county’s de-
cision was reversed last year
by the Land Use Board of Ap-
peals, which found the dwell-
ing replacement provision is
“somewhat ambiguous” but
only applies to a five-year
“look back” period during
which property taxes were
imposed.
The Court of Appeals
has disagreed with that un-
derstanding, ruling that it’s
“logical to conclude that the
legislature intended to excuse
demolished dwellings from
the taxation requirement alto-
gether.”
Initiative petition seeks
Brown to sign tax bill,
gun storage requirements calls for special session
By Claire Withycombe
Capital Bureau
Advocates want to get a
second gun-related measure
on the statewide ballot in No-
vember.
Initiative Petition 44, filed
Monday, would create addi-
tional storage, transfer and re-
porting requirements for gun
owners.
The petition’s filing fol-
lows the Feb. 14 shooting at
Marjory Stoneman Douglas
High School in Parkland,
Florida, and subsequent stu-
dent walk-outs and marches
in support of tightening gun
regulations.
It also follows another
statewide initiative petition,
IP 43, that would ban the sale
of certain types of firearms in
Oregon and require current
owners of those types of guns
to undergo a new background
check and register them.
The new measure filed on
Monday would amend state
statutes to require that a per-
son who owns or possesses a
firearm to “secure the firearm
with a trigger or cable lock
engaged or in a locked con-
tainer equipped with a tam-
per-resistant lock.”
It would also require a per-
son who “owns, possesses or
controls” a firearm to report
if the gun was stolen or lost
within 24 hours of learning of
the theft or loss. Additionally,
it would require people trans-
ferring firearms to do so with
a trigger or cable lock en-
gaged or in a locked container
with a tamper-resistant lock.
Transfer is defined in the
measure as “the delivery of
a firearm, including, but not
limited to, sale, gift, loan or
lease of the firearm.”
Finally, the measure would
require that a person transfer-
ring a firearm to a minor must
directly supervise the minor’s
use of the firearm.
Under the measure, gun
owners would also face lia-
bility for injuries that result
from failure to meet those
requirements, unless the inju-
ry “results from a lawful act
of self-defense or defense of
another person.” The liability
would apply for five years af-
ter a violation of the measure,
such as an unsecured transfer.
One of the petitioners,
Paul Kemp, says part of the
impetus behind the measure
was the death of his brother-
in-law, Steve Forsyth, who
was killed in the Dec. 11,
2012 Clackamas Town Center
shooting.
The shooter, who killed
Forsyth, 45, and Cindy Ann
Yuille, 54, and injured a
15-year-old girl, before kill-
ing himself, stole the gun,
a Stag Arms AR-15, from a
friend.
“Most folks who have
guns are pretty good about se-
curing them,” Kemp, himself
a gun owner, said. “The prob-
lem is, there’s too many folks
who aren’t.”
The idea, says Jake Wei-
gler, a spokesman for Orego-
nians For Safe Gun Storage,
which supports the petition, is
to create an enforcement sys-
tem in the event that a crime
is committed, similar to how
adults can be held liable if
they furnish alcohol to a mi-
nor.
The state doesn’t go
around searching your liquor
Michael B. DesJardin
Dentistry, PC
cabinet, but if, for example,
a minor gets into a car acci-
dent while intoxicated and
authorities learn that an adult
purchased or provided them
alcohol, then the law can be
enforced.
Kevin Starrett, head of the
Oregon Firearms Federation,
criticized IP 44, and said that
a gun owner should have the
right to store the gun in a man-
ner they see fit and that is in
line with their “personal cir-
cumstances,” such as whether
or not there are young chil-
dren in the home.
“This is not how you solve
the problem of people who
use guns in a criminal fash-
ion, by punishing people who
don’t use guns in a criminal
fashion,” Starrett said.
Starrett also took issue
with a section of the measure
that would hold a gun owner
who transferred a gun with-
out securing it — either with
a trigger lock, cable lock or
secured container — liable
for another person’s injuries
for five years after the gun is
transferred.
Gun control advocates
have tried to pass similar leg-
islation in prior legislative
sessions, mostly focused on
preventing minors’ access to
firearms.
Petitioners are aiming for
the November 2018 ballot.
In order to go forward in the
ballot title process, the pe-
titioners must collect 1,000
sponsorship signatures.
Capital Bureau
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown
says she’ll sign a controver-
sial business tax bill into
law and wants to convene a
special session of the Legis-
lature to extend a tax break to
sole proprietorships.
Oregon
automatically
conforms to the federal tax
code unless state lawmakers
pass legislation specifically
to modify it. That’s what law-
makers did with Senate Bill
1528. The legislation pre-
vented owners of so-called
pass-through businesses —
sole proprietorships, partner-
ship, limited liability corpo-
rations and S-corporations
— from deducting up to 20
percent of their business in-
come from their 2018 state
tax return. The deduction
was created by the recent
federal tax overhaul.
Brown wants lawmakers
to convene to tweak Oregon
law so that owners of sole
proprietorships can receive
special tax rates offered to
other “pass throughs” since
2013.
Brown contends that
making those changes and
disallowing the 20 percent
deduction would make the
tax system for small business
more equitable.
“Through my review and
analysis it has become ap-
parent that Oregon’s existing
preferred rate structure for
File photo
Gov. Kate Brown says
she will sign a bill that
keeps owners of small
businesses from taking
a 20 percent deduction
created by federal law
on their state tax return.
She has also called for
a special legislative
session to extend special
tax rates offers to other
small business owners
and owners of sole
proprietorships.
pass-through entities, which
is relatively new, is not per-
fect and has some inequities
in it,” Brown, a Democrat
running for reelection, wrote
in a bill signing letter Friday
to Oregon Secretary of State
Dennis Richardson. “...It is
clear to me that sole propri-
etors ought to be allowed to
participate in this preferred
rate structure.”
Lawmakers passed the
bill in the last days of the
recent short session to blunt
the effects of the federal tax
overhaul on Oregon’s reve-
nues. It is expected to raise
$244 million in the current
two-year budget cycle, which
concludes in mid-2019.
Many Republicans in the
Legislature and some mem-
bers of the business commu-
nity had been vocal about
their opposition to the bill
and called on the governor to
veto it.
In a press conference Fri-
day, Brown noted that those
business owners already re-
ceive special rates from the
state and will be able to use
the deductions on their feder-
al returns. Brown said sign-
ing the bill “prevents a third
tax break at the expense of
our schools, our children and
our seniors.”
Senate Republican Lead-
er Jackie Winters, of Sa-
lem, disagreed, saying in a
statement after Friday’s an-
nouncement that “the right
thing to do would be to veto
this partisan tax increase on
small business.”
“Start-ups, mom and pop
shops, and young entrepre-
neurs are doing great things
for Oregon, but the majority
party insists on passing an
unfair tax increase that will
stifle their growth, and harm
the very Oregonians we
should be helping,” Winters
said. “There is no budgetary
need to raise taxes on small
businesses.”
The Prairie
American Legion Post #0106
would like to thank the
retailers and participants
who made our fund raising
raffle a great success!
Thank You!
Preventive, Restorative & Endodontics
New Patients
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541-575-2725
mbddental@live.com
michaelbdesjardindmd.com
By Claire Withycombe
49487
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Mother’s Day Brunch
May 13
Book online, eaglecaptrainrides.com or call 800.323.7330
Attend a Rocky Mountain
Elk Foundation Dinner
and Benefit Auction
Where fun and fund-raising combine for a
memorable evening.
Date:
Time:
Saturday, April 21
4:00—Doors open
5:30—Dinner
7:30—Auction
Place: Pavilion—
Grant County Fairgrounds
Ticket Information:
Gale Wall (541) 575-2661
652 W. Main Street
John Day
541-575-0549
A great time for a great cause.
Proceeds benefit elk and other wildlife.