Reporting from Salem
Rep. Patrick Sheehan said he wanted to start a conversation by introducing a bill to peel back Metro's planning authority.
At a Oregon House Transportation and Economic Development Committee hearing on Friday, legislators got an earful.
Sheehan, a Republican from Clackamas who serves on the committee, was one of seven people to testify in favor of House Bill 3438.
In his testimony, Sheehan said the need for a regional planning partner for cities has changed from a time, decades ago, when land use planning was broad and less defined.
"In 1979, this was the first instance of regional government in the country," Sheehan said. "It was billed as a model, and it's a model that's never been duplicated anywhere."
The hearing was fast-paced, with speakers repeatedly asked by Co-Chair Rep. Cliff Bentz, R-Ontario, to keep their testimony short. There were no questions asked by the seven committee members in attendance, nor dialogue among them.
Several private citizens made the trip to the capitol to testify in favor of the bill, co-sponsored by Sheehan and Rep. Matt Wand, R-Troutdale.
"Metro has a very distinct vision of how a core city should operate," said Gresham resident Roger Miracle." "Unfortunately they've expanded that vision to outlying communities and it has significantly changed our communities from rural communities to more reflect core cities. There's a reason why people moved out of core cities - they wanted a different lifestyle."
Robert Powell, a former chairman of the Oregon City Chamber of Commerce, was more blunt.
"I think the history of Metro, while interesting, has essentially been a failure," he said. "Metro absorbs a tremendous amount of money and as an experiment it was expected to be a model for the rest of the United States. Frankly, experiments fail."
One of Metro's failures, said Damascus Mayor Steve Spinnett, was adding another layer of planning to the already cumbersome process of designing a new city.
"These five layers of government planning requirements is burdensome, expensive and most of all it's unnecessary," he said. "Our little town of 10,000 people has spent more than $3.5 million on planning, and we've got a long ways to go."
Former Metro Council candidate Steve Schopp was critical of Metro for directing transportation funding to active transportation projects.
"It's a totalitarian regime now… It might as well be the City Council of Portland running the entire region," he said. "They continue to raid money and spend it inappropriately the way Portland wants it spent."
Dave Hunnicutt from Oregonians in Action testified in favor of the proposal.
Metro Council President Tom Hughes focused most of his testimony on the provision in the bill that would take away Metro's authority to regulate the expansion of the urban growth boundary. But he pointed out that what's widely regarded as the biggest failure of the UGB expansion process, the massive Damascus expansion of 2002, was not Metro's fault.
"Damascus was driven not by Metro policy but by state law," he said. "That's where the exception lands were and what the state required for urban growth boundary expansion."
He said leaving boundary decisions to cities was a bad idea.
"If you have an individual city for an urban growth boundary expansion, what you have is every city expands to meet what they perceive of the needs in that particular city," Hughes said. "Then we basically have no UGB."
While lobbyists from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and from Washington County testified against the bill, most of the testimony in opposition to HB 3438 came in the form of letters from the Portland area.
"While we believe there are many ways to improve the urban growth boundary process in the Metro region, eliminating the regional boundary process through Metro is not one of them," wrote Clackamas County Business Alliance Executive Director Burton Weast. "Having so many urban growth boundaries would result in a never-ending process, and take away from our, and all other business related associations, ability to retain employers in Clackamas County and the region."
Kelly Ross, the executive director of the Oregon Chapter of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties, also wrote to oppose the bill.
"We assume that the intent of the bill’s sponsors is to make the regional planning process less cumbersome and more driven by elected officials at the city and county level," Ross wrote. "Unfortunately, however, in the absence of established law and regional authority, we fear that the Land Conservation and Development Commission and appellate courts would be forced to take a much stronger role to ensure that any UGB changes are consistent with existing statutes."
Letters in opposition also came from Hillsboro Mayor Jerry Willey, Commercial Realty Advisors Northwest principal broker Robert LeFeber, Clackamas County Chair Charlotte Lehan, 1000 Friends of Oregon lobbyist Mary Kyle McCurdy and Newland Communities regional vice president Davis Wood.
In an interview after the hearing, Sheehan said the next step after the hearing was to "take a deep breath."
"I think it at least gets the conversation started. You cannot dial back a government agency of this size and this reach with the stroke of a pen," he said. "This is going to take a lot of time, a lot of consideration and a lot of debate."
Sheehan said it's "cultural incongruities" between suburban areas and Portland planning that necessitated the discussion. With a thud, he dropped a 3-inch binder with Metro's Urban Growth Management Functional Plan on his desk.
"Land use planning should be a monster," Sheehan said. "But in one or two places. Mayor Spinnett has five layers of land use planning."
He said he appreciated the suggestion of Clackamas County Commissioner Paul Savas, who said someone should track the nature of land use requests in the Metro area over time. And while he emphasized that he's not a proponent of task forces, Sheehan said he'd like to see a task force to look at some of the issues.
"This is one of critical concern for outlying areas," he said.