Good intentions gone awry leave Oregon in the lurch

It’s been a long time coming, but a sitting Oregon governor finally conceded earlier this month, at Oregon’s annual Oregon Leadership Summit, that business leaders have a point when they complain about private initiative and enterprise being strangled here in rules, regulations and red tape.

And while the state’s No. 1 Democrat didn’t single out what we join many others in viewing as the No. 1 offender — the state’s sluggish, burdensome and legalistic land-use system, in which state control and bureaucratic delay routinely seem to trump local control and timely decisionmaking — House Speaker Julie Fahey did.

According to the Capital Chronicle, Fahey indicated being at least “open to conversations” about easing a calcified regulatory framework built up over the years around 1973’s Senate Bill 100, cornerstone of Oregon’s land use system. It quoted her as saying, “It is worth looking at, ‘How can we introduce some additional flexibility to the system while still keeping what works?”

That opinion met with instant approval from Senate Minority Leader Bruce Starr, who complained the current Oregon system gives “the ability to virtually anybody to, with the stroke of a pen and appeal, stop a process” — a position widely shared on the minority side of the aisle, but heretofore something of a heresy on the majority side.

On our Nov. 28 Viewpoints cover, John Charles Jr. of the Cascade Policy Institute said: “Oregon is the sixth-largest state in the country, but only 1.5% of its land is urbanized. More than half is in federal ownership, which means no development. Most private land is zoned for exclusive farm or forest use, making it off-limits to housing, retail or commercial development. In other words, Oregon is a museum where you can look but not touch.”

He continued, “When this vision was adopted as statewide land-use policy in 1973 by the Oregon Legislature, it probably seemed reasonable.” But he said that time is long past, and we concur.

On our Dec. 5 Viewpoints cover, State Rep. Cyrus Javadi sounded a similar refrain about the state’s chronic housing shortage, lamenting, “Oregon didn’t wake up one morning and decide to have a housing crisis. It evolved slowly, one well-intentioned rule and one ‘no’ vote at a time.”

He also pointed back to the 1970s, when the state drew urban growth boundaries around cities to curb sprawl, and ended up committing the collateral damage of choking off the housing supply. He cited “death by a thousand hearings,” complaining, “Every new project has to survive a maze of neighborhood objections, environmental reviews and design approvals.”

We would add to that, an avalanche of remands from the state’s Kafkaesque Land Use Board of Appeals, capable of keeping lawyers racking up billable hours on both sides, year after year, without ever reaching a clear conclusion. If justice delayed is justice denied, as has often been argued, LUBA’s arcane workings represent a prime example.

In Gov. Tina Kotek’s “Oregon’s Prosperity Roadmap,” just released as she announced her 2026 re-election run, she pledges to streamline approvals, accelerate permitting, remove barriers to growth, incentivize investment, fast-track major projects, boost infrastructure investment, prioritize economic development, explore “targeted” tax changes, offer training assistance and help expand access to capital. Though the devil’s in the details, that all sounds well and good.

At the same time, however, she’s proposing to create and fund:

-- A new position of chief prosperity officer, charged with refining and expanding a new set of state goals and initiatives in concert with a new Governor’s Prosperity Council.

-- A new Global Trade Desk, charged with expanding opportunities for international commerce and promoting Oregon abroad.

We are less enamored of elements serving, as those do, to expand lines of state command and control. Sometimes it seems getting out of the way might be wiser that flooding the field with new goals, strategies, initiatives and agendas.

We find most fault with Oregon’s minority party for failing to take governing seriously, settling too often for empty talking points simply pandering to uninformed voters. We most find fault for its majority party for all too often turning the best of intentions into the worst of operations, in its zeal to offer a government remedy for every illness.

Our prescription for what ails Oregon leans toward streamlining existing regulatory processes, not imposing new ones sure to have unintended consequences down the line. And we think our notorious land use chokepoint is a perfect place to start.