PORTLAND, Ore. — It's been 31 years since then-Gov. Tom McCall asked Oregon lawmakers to protect this fast-growing state from "sagebrush subdivisions, coastal condo-mania and the ravenous rampage of suburbia" -- and the Legislature responded by approving the most complete system of land-use planning in the nation.
Since then, anti-sprawl boundaries have helped revive Oregon's aging cities and preserve vast tracts of farm- and forestland in a sort of Norman Rockwell tableau of rural America.
While a mini-Silicon Valley has sprouted in suburban Portland, for example, farmers have continued to grow crops across the street in an agricultural zone formed to ensure that the long, wet and fertile Willamette Valley is never paved over.
But on Nov. 2, Oregon's voters, angered by what they saw as bureaucratic disregard for landowners, staged a revolt. By a vote of 60% to 40%, they approved a process designed to restore property rights stripped from owners by regulations enacted after they bought their land, or to require governments to pay a fair price for taking those rights away.
"A lot of voters just thought what was happening here was fundamentally unfair," said Ross Day, legal counsel for Oregonians in Action, the property-rights group that wrote Measure 37. "In Oregon, when government steals your retirement nest egg, they call it planning."
Fueling the campaign was the story of Dorothy English.
"I'm 91 years old, my husband is dead, and I don't know how much longer I can fight," she said in radio ads for Measure 37.
The Englishes bought 40 hilltop acres near Portland overlooking the Columbia River and Mt. St. Helens in 1953, intending to divide the parcel for retirement income. But the 1973 statewide planning law stopped that.
"It ruined our lives," she said in an interview. "We could have done anything we wanted for our family and our friends. But then we couldn't do anything. I worked until I was 80."
Most voters in all but one of Oregon's counties responded by voting for Measure 37. The campaign succeeded despite being outspent by opponents, who included governors from both major parties, 15 of 18 county farm bureaus, planning advocates, environmental groups, labor unions and the three statewide utilities.
They argued that the measure would undermine a planning system that had helped Oregon flourish for three decades, funneling money into decaying downtowns, fostering the reuse of vacant urban lands and luring affluent newcomers to vibrant new neighborhoods.
